


Holding On and Letting Go

by littlehollyleaf



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angst, Comfort/Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-05
Updated: 2014-01-05
Packaged: 2018-01-07 14:48:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1121119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlehollyleaf/pseuds/littlehollyleaf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>2013 Dean/Cas Secret Santa Exchange, for waywardseraph. Set after 9.09. Still trying to pick up the pieces of Kevin’s death and the loss of his brother, Dean discovers Cas has been badly hurt in an attack on Malachi and his people. Dean does everything he can to help Cas through the aftermath, but there are tragic complications involved in Cas' recovery that Dean especially struggles to come to terms with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Holding On and Letting Go

**Author's Note:**

> This is a combination of 2 of waywardseraph's prompts – Cas getting captured and tortured by angels, and Cas getting awkwardly emotional with Dean because he and/or Dean thinks he’s dying. Character death was also an option, and I was all for running with that and playing up the torture when I first read the prompts, because getting Cas bloody is disturbingly fun and I thought it would be an interesting challenge to write a lengthy, emotional deathfic! Only then, gosh darn it, 9.09 happened and the show only had to go and steal my thunder, giving us a canon capture and torture of Cas by angels AND a character death all in one explosive package! I figured Kevin was more than enough character death for the time being :/ and I decided to springboard off the back of that instead. I don’t think it veers too far from the prompts x

( **edit:** it’s come to my attention that there is a notable continuity error in this fic - I have an angel fly away, despite the S08 Fall leaving all angels without their wings throughout S09. This is VERY INFURIATING for me, because it’s a really BIG and OBVIOUS error and I can’t believe I didn’t notice it while I was writing! Tut tut me. This is what happens when I write to a deadline, my mind starts to go… So… Yeah… Just wanted to offer an apology for that… Sorry sorry… I’ll give a No Prize to anyone who can explain the mistake away!)

\---

**Holding On and Letting Go**  


Beep. Beep. The steady, rhythmic sound and accompanying lines on the monitor are almost hypnotic. Beep. But instead of calming him they only increase Dean's tension. Beep. His eyes follow the next line with rapt attention and find it the same perfect pitch and beat as the last. Beep. And like all the others before it brings no relief. Because what if this one is the last one? Beep. What if this is the moment? Beep. That final, sickening moment when those flickering lines turn into one long, never-ending one that stretches on and on, pulling Dean's heart along with it.

Beep.

Dean shifts in his chair and feels a prickling shoot up his arm. His right hand has been gripping the cheap wooden handle so tight for so long it's done what Dean himself has been finding increasingly difficult these last few days and fallen asleep.

It's an annoyance more than pain and Dean ignores it at first, maintaining his vigil. But soon the numbness has crept up to his elbow and can no longer be denied. With reluctance Dean drags his gaze from the monitor and turns his attention to himself, rubbing impatiently at his frozen arm with his other hand and clenching and unclenching his fist to get the blood flowing again.

He hisses at the sensation and the sound makes him miss the next electronic beat. He shakes his hand, hissing some more, to dispel the last of the feeling, then settles back down in the chair, arms folded this time.

Beepbeep. Beep. Beepbeep. Beepbeep.

Dean's breath catches in his throat and his eyes fly from the changing monitor—his worst nightmare come to life—to the prone figure on the bed beside it. With bandages wrapped round his head, chest exposed to give easy access to the ones around his torso, and patches of gauze stuck to his cheek and parts of his arms, Cas looks like a ragdoll. An unloved toy, tossed about then discarded. 

As Dean watches, a ragged breath passes Cas' lips and his head twitches, features contorting into a grimace, and the once steady rhythm of Cas' heart gets faster and faster.

"No." Dean's voice is cracked, his mouth struggling to form the necessary movements for speech after hours of silence. "No... come on..."

The numbness in his hand forgotten, Dean reaches over. For a second his fingers hover, uncertain, over the bedside, scared of making things worse. Given the circumstances, Dean can't help thinking of his touch as a kind of death toll. Everyone close to him is currently dead or gone and why should Cas be any different? But then Cas convulses, hand nearest Dean clenching enough to turn Cas' knuckles white and risk dislodging the drip with its vital fluids, which in that moment looks so precariously attached.

So Dean presses down without thinking, gripping Cas' wrist just below the tape keeping the plastic tube in place. He can feel Cas' arm straining against the hold but it takes little effort on Dean's part to withstand his friend's resistance. Something that turns his quick relief to panic—has Cas grown so weak?

The monitor persists with its erratic display and Cas starts to toss and turn, laboured breathing turning to desperate, high pitched noises that sound unpleasantly like whimpers.

Abandoning his chair, Dean stands and leans over the bed, grabbing Cas' far shoulder with his other hand to pin him in place, fearful of Cas damaging his—many, many—stitches. 

Beepbeepbeep. Beepbeep. Beepbeepbeep. Beepbeepbeep.

His heart rate is accelerating way too fast! If this keeps up...

Dean swallows and the saliva sticks in his throat. He wants to call for a doctor, but doesn't know if he could even get the words out. Is too scared to let go of Cas now, even for an instant, in any case.

"Come on, come on..." he mutters instead, the words clawing their way out of him. "Stay with me, man. You gotta... you gotta stay with me..."

For one heart-stopping moment Cas goes completely still. His whimpering stops, along with his breath. Along with Dean's. And a still line shows on the monitor. Beeping replaced by a monotonous drone.

Then—

Beep. Cas sighs out a long breath and sags back into the starched white hospital sheets. Beep. Dean doesn't let go. Beep. Cas' breathing slowly evens out. Beep. His face softens, fists unclenching, as the nightmare passes. Beep. 

Tentatively, Dean lifts his hands away. 

He keeps his position over the bed a few moments longer, then returns to his seat, his own breathing still far from calm. After a while he refolds his arms in the hope it might stop them shaking and turns his gaze back on the screen. 

It's stupid to think it was his distraction that caused Cas' momentary trauma, but Dean vows not to look away again, just in case. His focus on the monitor grows so intense that the rest of the room starts to fade away until there's nothing but that green line spiking up and down and up and down and up and down. This isn't a bad thing for Dean. He's more than happy to keep his eyes on that line and forget everything else. Forget the broken state his best friend is lying in. Forget how his little brother is lost god knows where. Forget that Kevin has no eyes to watch anything with ever again.

God but he wants to forget.

\---

Time lost meaning after Ezekiel—no, after the angel, whoever they were—left. Taking Sam along with them.

Dean doesn't know how long he lay there on the cold paving of the bunker floor. Just that by the time he did push to his feet his legs were stiff with cramp, and the burnt sockets that used to be Kevin's eyes had finally stopped smoking.

He can't recall if the first time he said the name was with purpose, or if he'd just been reaching out in his loss. Either way, the "Cas" had come tumbling out of him and once it had Dean couldn't stop. Because it hit him then, with something like hope and a lot like desperation, that if Cas had his mojo back then he could hear prayers again. Then he could _heal_ again.

Pretty soon Dean was screaming. Yelling Castiel's name until his throat was raw and his heart numb, the tears in his eyes all dried up.

It was only then he'd remembered the bunker was warded tight against everything under the sun, angels included, prompting him to dash up the stairs and outside in case Cas was waiting at the door.

When he'd found the road outside empty he'd shouted up at the sky a few thousand times more for good measure before admitting defeat and accepting that Cas wasn't answering. He'd hoped this was because Cas' new grace, or whatever, wasn't working right yet and that his friend couldn't hear him. But buried in the back of his mind was a deep dark fear that Cas could hear just fine, but was choosing to ignore Dean in favour of the war he'd pledged himself to. It wouldn't, after all, have been the first time.

Things are dark and kind of patchy after that and Dean's not sure what happened exactly. Only that by the time he'd ended up outside Crowley's cell in the dungeon the knuckles on his right fist were raw and bleeding—he'd later found spots of blood on the balcony wall, bits of plaster crumbled around them as if the place had been hit repeatedly for a long time.

He hadn't wasted time explaining, just dragged the demon out by his shackles into the library where Kevin was still fallen. Dean thinks Crowley might have made some snarky comment, something like "what do you call a prophet with no eyes?" He remembers the punch he'd landed on the demon more clearly, how Crowley spat blood on the floor and the vivid splash of it made Dean realise for the first time that, aside from the eyes, Kevin was unblemished. 

A crazy fleeting moment of gratitude for Zeke, or whoever, had passed over Dean then as he wondered if the angel had chosen the most efficient and swiftest means for his execution, if he had thought to spare Kevin pain. 

The disgust at the thought seconds later tasted like bile. He'd still been, instinctively, thinking of 'Zeke' as an ally, Dean realised. As someone he'd slowly, very slowly, been starting to imagine might one day be a friend. That needed to stop.

Negotiation with Crowley was a blur. The demon must have played him like a fiddle, fuck knows how many loopholes and sub-clauses he'd put in the deal they struck. Dean and his soul would have been royally screwed had the thing taken.

Crowley seemed to take his failure almost as hard as Dean.

Any other time the way his triumphant smirk had dropped away after their kiss, eyes widening then dulling in abject despair and no little humiliation, would have had Dean in raptures. If it hadn't been Kevin's prone, unchanged form that was causing Crowley's shame.

The taste of Crowley's dry lips and tongue lingered as Dean yelled at him for screwing around, shaking Crowley with each exclamation. But it wasn't the violent, violating clash of his mouth with Crowley's that he'd willingly, eagerly, subjected himself to that had turned Dean's stomach. It was the weight of the truth finally sinking in.

Crowley had still been stammering apologies, seemingly heartfelt, when Dean cast him aside. Something about "that bitch Abaddon" and "cut off from Hell." Something about the trials and human blood taking away his "crossroad crown." 

Dean didn't listen. Hadn't needed Crowley's assurance that, of course, this naturally made their deal null and void and Dean's soul his own, because while Crowley might not have the means to provide his usual level of service he was still committed to fair business and blah blah blah. 

Dean didn't care.

All he'd cared about as he sank to his knees beside Kevin's body had been how the kid had trusted him. How he'd put his life in Dean's hands, despite having every reason and every opportunity not to. 

He could have got out. He could have left and had a life, had a family, had a future.

Instead he'd stayed. Because Dean had asked him to. 

Promising him a home. Promising him protection.

He'd deserved so much better.

\---

Ten days and countless nightmares later Cas' condition is unchanged.

The doctors start giving Dean stats on coma patients, telling him optimistically that in many cases patients wake up to a full recovery, _but_ —

Dean's not interested in 'but.'

It's like Sam after the trials all over again and Dean wonders if this is the universe enacting some kind of sick poetic justice. Cas is in this state because of how Dean reacted to his brother being in the same, after all. No Ezekiel—or who-the-fuck-ever—and Cas would never have been out there facing angel hit squads alone. He would have been safe with Dean in the bunker. Where he was supposed to be. Where Dean should never have let him leave. 

_Made_ him leave.

Cas' failure to wake isn't the only problem either. Dean managed to bullshit his way through a police investigation when they first arrived with a story about them being attacked outside town, but the detective running the case was back the other morning with more questions and Dean knows the story isn't going to hold up much longer. Then there's the sigils Dean's been surreptitiously etching into the corners of windows and doorways, under the bed and carpet and anywhere he can where they're least likely to be spotted and cause investigation. There's only so long they'll go unnoticed, and Dean's not sure they're strong enough to provide adequate protection against Bartholomew, Malachi and the rest anyhow. He needs to get Cas out of here sooner rather than later, but daren't risk moving him until he's sure Cas will survive the trip. 

Still, he's fostered strong sympathies among the doctors and nurses at least.

He'd told them Cas was his brother, but must have been too distracted at the time to give a convincing con because the staff seem to have formed their own ideas about Dean's relationship to Castiel. No one's said anything outright, but he's noticed a few of them put a weird, but not unkind, inflection on 'brother' when telling him about Cas' responses to various tests. One nurse even randomly confided how she'd once been refused access to her 'partner,' who was laid up after a car accident at the time, because she wasn't 'family,' before patting Dean on the shoulder and saying he could stay as long as he liked.

Another time the assumption might have been disconcerting, but right now Dean's just glad for the way it helps stretch his time with Cas beyond the limit of visiting hours and is happy to leave it unchallenged. 

He's careful not to spend _all_ his time at the hospital, of course. That would get suspicious. So he leaves occasionally to go 'home' and 'get some sleep.' Which translates to parking outside somewhere he can see the window to Cas' room and keeping watch from there, angel blade close to hand. 

Sleep and food is squeezed in during odd hours between all this—in the wooden chair, the hospital waiting room and the Impala.

It's inconvenient, but Dean can't think how else to work it. It's not like he can take shifts watching Cas, or leave him in someone else's care while he takes care of other things, like himself. He's alone in this. Alone in everything now.

Jody might help, but Dean refuses to put another innocent in the line of angel fire. And can't bring himself to face her questions about Sam in any case.

Which is why Dean is dozing the next time Cas starts to mutter in his sleep.

His eyes soon snap open when Cas starts calling his name though.

"Dean... Dean..."

Cas isn't thrashing about this time, but his heart-rate's on the rise again. The doctors insist that isn't risk anymore, that Cas has grown strong enough to cope, but Dean's not taking chances.

"Hey," he tries, leaning forward in his chair. "Hey, I... I'm here..."

Cas doesn't respond, just keeps muttering, sounds that fluctuate between sense and nonsense, eyes flicking back and forth beneath his lids as he dreams. So far though, impossibly, it seems Dean's presence has had a calming effect whenever a nightmare starts up, so Dean reaches out with the assumption this time will be the same.

"No, Dean... please... I can't..."

A hard lump pushes its way up Dean's throat and he has to swallow twice to push it back, leaving it to curl into a knot in the pit of his stomach instead. Dean draws his hand away. This is new. Cas has never spoken this clearly before, just little gasps and shows of pain. He's not reliving his torture this time, he's reliving something else. A time when it was _Dean_ , apparently, responsible for causing him pain enough for his voice to break like it is.

"Please, no... don't make me..."

Don't make him what?

...don't make him leave?

Regret burns hot and wet in the corners of Dean eyes and he presses them tight together to keep it from overpowering him. He never thought, never imagined, that shutting Cas out might have hurt his friend as much as it had hurt Dean himself. 

Because Cas had been so... _competent_ at the Gas'n'Sip. Good at his job. Dating. Well, almost. On the verge of building a real, solid, civilian life for himself. He... he hadn't needed Dean then. Hell even the killer angel was something Cas had dealt with largely on his own, Dean just provided the weapon and helped patch Cas up after. And Cas hadn't _wanted_ to hunt then, hadn't _wanted_ to fight for and with angels and be a soldier again.

But Dean's life, well, it's all about fighting. Even without Sam to protect, that will always be true. If he'd learnt anything from Purgatory, it's that he's a hunter through and through. 

So he'd figured Cas was _happier_ out of his life. That Cas _wanted_ it that way. 

That he was _safer_ that way.

Yeah... so safe he's lying here half dead after his _second_ bout of angel torture. Third if you counted 'April.' Forth if you include the broken wrist the killer angel had given him.

No. It was lies, all of it. A way of justifying sending Cas away. Convincing himself he'd done Cas a favour, so he wouldn't have to admit what he'd really done was throw his friend to the wolves.

"I can't, I _won't_... he's my friend..."

Dean blinks. What does _that_ mean?

Cas starts moving then, turning his head back and forth, the motion making his pillows slide up against the headboard.

"Naomi, _please!_ "

And with that the dream slots into place. It's hard to believe that after everything, memories of hurting Dean should cause Cas such anguish. 

Less paralysed now, Dean leans in to grip Cas by the shoulders. A move he's grown well practised in.

"Cas. Hey, hey. Enough," Dean mutters as he holds Cas still. He has no idea if his friend can hear him, suspects not, but the words are instinctive. An attempt to connect somehow, to bring Cas back.

It worked once before, after all. Back in that crypt. Back when it was the real Naomi Cas was subject to and not just a memory of her.

"No..." Cas mutters, weaker now, head shaking one final time before his eyes snap open. 

And even though it's what Dean's been waiting for, desperate for, this whole time, the shock of it leaves him gasping and jerking backwards.

Free again, Cas bolts upright, eyes unfocused and wide with panic. " _NO!_ " he yells, quickly followed by a cry of pain as he doubles over, clutching at the bandages round his chest.

"Whoa, whoa, easy..." 

Dean means to be soothing, but fear poisons his words, making them harsh and scolding, his hands snatching at Cas' fingers to stop him from clawing his bandages. The dressing holding Cas' drip in place gets crushed under Dean's grip and Cas winces, trying to pull away.

"Cas, stop it, stop!" Dean begs, rising panic making his heart jackrabbit almost as fast as his friend's. Because he's screwing this up, isn't he? Like he always does. Cas is finally awake, finally showing improvement for the first time in days, and all Dean can do is cause more damage. 

But Cas isn't done yet. Despite the fact there's bandaging wrapped round his shoulder, covering stitches round his collarbone that must make even the slightest movement agonising effort, he swings his free arm round, aiming for Dean's head. Luckily, the stitching restricts the movement badly enough for Dean to see it coming a mile off. He grabs Cas' forearm before Cas is even halfway through his swing and pushes his friend's arm to his side.

"Cas, it's me," Dean pants, trying to catch Cas' eye. 

Fat pupils jerk up and lock into Dean's. Cas' expression almost feral with distrust.

"It's just me," Dean repeats.

For a couple of seconds Cas struggles to escape Dean's hold, an attempt so pathetic it's scary. Then he stops. Stares. And awareness dawns, slowly but surely.

"Dean?" His voice is cracked. Raw.

"Yeah," Dean hurries to assure him, trying for a smile. "You wanna give me another shiner just to be sure?"

The joke falls flat, Cas' only response a blank look that gradually turns to concern as his eyes scan over Dean's face and find the still visible bruising around Dean's left eye. It's mostly faded now, just a light mottle of purple, but the shock on Cas' face at the sight makes Dean think his friend might not remember much, if any, of the ambulance ride down. Which is, perhaps, for the best. 

"I... I did that?" Cas asks, quiet, words thick with guilt.

"Forget it, it's nothing," Dean tells him. In truth, the pain of it had felt _good_. Like punishment. One it seemed to Dean he more than deserved.

"But—oh..."

Cas' objection cuts off into a moan and he sags into Dean, head lolling forward.

"Okay, time to lie back down." Dean helps to ease Cas back onto the mattress and oh sure he's gentle _now_ , now that the moment of crisis is over. He couldn't be the support Cas needed _when_ he needed it, no, not Dean Winchester. Dean, who only ever lets the people he cares about down, again and again.

"I feel weak," Cas complains. His brow furrows for a moment, making the bandage wrapped about his head stretch across the skin, and his lips part like he means to say more. To protest at being manhandled perhaps, if the frown he directs at Dean's hands as they fuss with Cas' pillows is anything to go by. But the effort proves too much and his face relaxes instead, eyes drifting to the ceiling.

"Well, yeah," Dean answers. "You were... you were sliced and diced, man. Cut up six ways to Sunday. Took a serious hit to the head. The doctors were starting to think you might never wake up. Yeah, you're gonna be weak."

"Doctors..." Cas repeats, still staring ahead, passed where Dean is leaning over him. "This is... a hospital."

"I had to, you were hurt too bad." Dean doesn't like the way Cas isn't focusing on him anymore. The way his eyelids are drooping. "Hold on, okay," he says with a quick pat on Cas' unbandaged shoulder. "I'm gonna be right back."

It doesn't take long to find a nurse, but even in those few minutes of stepping into the corridor outside and waving one down Dean is fearful Cas is going to slip into unconsciousness again while he's gone. Relief is palpable when they return to find Cas' eyes still open and as the girl busies about checking Cas' pulse, adjusting his dressings and shining lights into his eyes, Dean feels... lighter. Not free. Never. God, thoughts of Sam and Kevin are a constant dark and heavy presence. But seeing Cas well cared for and his carer smiling and nodding in satisfaction gives Dean hope that here is one part of his life, at least, that might just be okay. 

There's a moment of doubt when the nurse starts asking some basic questions, to check Cas' cognition presumably. _Do you know where you are?_ is an easy one. Cas offers 'hospital' without hesitation. _Do you remember your name?_ might have been tricky if Dean had checked him in with a more complicated alias, but fortunately Cas' instinctive 'Castiel' matches half of what Dean had written on the hospital form at least. The nurse doesn't push for a surname. _What's the name of the president?_ makes Dean fret, but after a brief frown Cas is able to provide 'Barack Obama' and the nurse flashes another smile and nods.

"Good," she says. "You're doing good, Castiel."

"So..." Dean cuts in. "So, he's gonna be okay?" 

"I'll call a doctor for a check up," the nurse answers. "But everything looks fine. I think with time and rest he should make a full recovery, yes."

The weight of relief at this announcement is so strong Dean finds himself dropping back into his chair, a sigh punching its way out of him.

"My body feels strange," Cas complains, as though in argument, managing to turn his head enough to put the nurse in his line of sight. "Distant..."

"That's normal," the nurse assures him with another smile and a light touch to Cas' shoulder. "Coma patients often experience some disconnection after waking, and the morphine might make you feel light-headed. The best thing now is to get some rest. Natural sleep is an important part of the healing process."

At first Cas looks dubious, but once again fatigue overcomes him and whatever worries he has melt away with a couple of weary blinks.

"I am tired," he admits.

The nurse gives him a final pat, offering comfort with an ease Dean can't help but envy. 

"I'll go get the doctor," she says, shooting Dean one last quick smile as she leaves. Dean thinks he manages to return the gesture, but can't be sure. In any case, whatever watery smile he might have managed fades as his gaze returns to Cas' awake, but still very broken, form. Okay he might be, _in time_ , but that doesn't negate the fact that Cas has been inches from death—something that doesn't get any easier, no matter how many times it happens. In fact the opposite. And it happens way _way_ too often.

"So much for your mojo, huh?" Dean says. A way to fill the growing silence.

The wry smile Cas offers back is heartening.

"I _have_ grace," he answers, voice soft. His gaze still drifts through Dean from time to time, but now Dean knows this is just a sign of fatigue it doesn't frighten him so much. Finds he can relate, in fact, and wonders if his own gaze has been similarly unfocused these last few days. "But... taking on the grace of another angel... to my knowledge it has never been done. I am finding it... difficult to control." He closes his eyes for a moment and Dean wonders if sleep has already begun to claim him. But then Cas speaks again, head shaking lightly. "I should have waited—waited until I was sure I was wholly angel again..."

There's criticism in his tone. Self-flagellation. Something else for Dean to relate to. 

"Let me guess," he starts, filling in the blanks. "You heard some of your angel buddies were in trouble and you rushed off half-cocked. No plan. No backup."

The _like always_ goes unsaid, but lingers between them regardless. Too much heart, little Alfie had said, had always been Castiel's problem, and damn if he wasn't right. Too much heart, too much wanting to help, and not enough thought to the consequences.

When Cas opens his eyes they meet Dean's in a small nod of acknowledgement.

"Although, it's not that I neglected to find backup," Cas offers in his defence. "As of yet I have no one on my side in this war..." He pauses to wet his lips. "Truth be told I—I don't know exactly what my side _is_ at the moment... but soon after we spoke I heard some talk on angel radio—" Cas shifts round on the bed so he's facing Dean properly. "I have not managed to completely 'tune in,' as you would say, to that yet, I hear only fragments, often nothing at all—" 

The memory of Kevin's corpse, wrapped in Men of Letters sheets taken from the kid's own bed, burning on the makeshift pyre Dean had erected outside the bunker, prevents any gratification Dean might have felt at learning his suspicions about why Cas hadn't answered his prayers were correct. But Dean is still glad to know. 

Gladness tainted with dark, twisting fear about the conversation this means is yet to come, the one where Dean must explain not just the truth about Sam and 'Ezekiel' but Kevin's fate too. Exposing the outcome of his choices. His mistakes. Ones that, this time, surely, are truly unforgivable. Dean, certainly, can't picture ever forgiving himself for this, so why should Cas? Cas who has been screwed over by Dean in this as sure as Kevin was, and almost as fatally. 

Dean may have Cas back now, but for how long?

"I heard where Malachi was holding prisoners," Cas is continuing and Dean blinks, trying to shake away dark thoughts long enough to listen at least. "I heard them... screaming. Malachi was angry at my escape, he must have decided to use them for..."

Cas trails off.

"Anger management," Dean supplies. It's easy to picture the scenario. Sickeningly easy. The catharsis of watching your rage cut deep red into once unbroken skin. Watching the liquid flow of it. The agonised screaming, the pleas, a welcome white noise, helping to pull your emotions into calming numbness.

Dean swallows and Cas turns his gaze back to the ceiling.

"I couldn't... I couldn't just leave them, Dean," he says. Not in defence now, just stating facts. Of course he couldn't. _Too much heart_. "Yes, I rushed in. It wasn't difficult at first. There were few guards and I killed several... I think... I cut some of the angels free... it's... it's hard to remember. My grace... this grace I stole, it... dwindled soon after that. I was overpowered..."

When he turns back to Dean his face is dark with confusion.

"How did you find me?"

"One of those angels you think you freed," Dean answers. "You did. And they found me."

"Who?"

Dean feels his lips twist into a scowl.

"Didn't give a name. In fact the guy barely said anything. Just that you'd saved him and now you needed help. That he could take me to you." The memory of the wild eyed angel loitering, awkwardly, by the Impala outside the bunker's entrance has Dean shaking his head. God knows how long he'd been waiting there before Dean had stepped out for a reluctant grocery run. "Well he did that alright. Zapped me right outside your buddy Malachi's torture chamber, while he flew off, not even a goodbye. Thank god you'd made your way out front. I know I'm good, but I don't think even I could have taken on a camp of angels alone."

That's two unknown angels Dean can't even curse the names of.

But instead of looking betrayed, Cas presses his lips together and gazes into the distance. His eyes soften in thought and it strikes Dean that he seems more fond more than furious.

"I never fought my way out," Cas breathes. "My memory of my time in that place is dull, but I recall that much."

"You must have," Dean presses. "I found you outside."

"No... no, I was, I must have been left there..." A slow smile warms Cas' face. It makes the graze on his cheek, no longer deemed in need of dressing, burn vivid red. "The others fought for me. They saved me. They must have."

Taking away that smile, destroying what might be one of Cas' last few sparks of happiness for a long time, is the last thing Dean wants to do. But he knows how painful false hope can be when it's left to grow.

"Then why didn't they stay? Explain things to me?" he questions, thinking to point out the holes in Cas' thinking all at once before his friend can invest too deeply in thoughts of support of other angels. "Why didn't any of them heal you, huh? Cas you've been _dying_ these last few days."

These facts don't even dent Cas' optimistic take away from the situation.

"They couldn't be seen to have aided me." He nods along to what he's saying, more confident of the truth of it with every word. "I may not have an army, but to show support for me is to reject both Malachi _and_ Bartholomew. It shows their loyalty belongs to neither. It makes an angel a target, from both sides. They couldn't take the risk... no... this was the only way they could help me... they did what they had to."

 _I did what I had to_.

Dean turns away. That line again. Seems everyone's doing 'what they had to' these days. 

He'd been so sure that was what he was doing, once. But now... Now the divide between what he _had_ to do and what he _could_ have done is anything but clear.

"So I do _have_ support..." Cas concludes with obvious delight and Dean can't bring himself to argue. "I—I should... try and find them..." Cas starts pushing himself up through this last, shifting his arms up the bed until he's propped up on his elbows.

"Hey, hey!" Dean protests, raising a hand to hold Cas back. "You heard what the lady said, you need rest."

The glare Cas gives him in response is so impressive Dean almost wants to back down out of simple respect for it. As it is, the red gash on his friend's cheek and the bandages wrapped about his chest, currently following the erratic rise and fall of Cas' laboured breathing, see him hold his ground.

"I can... I can heal myself, Dean," Cas insists. Gasping for breath with each pause. "I just need to... to access my... I..."

He stops, blinking hard, as his head and shoulders start to sway.

"I..."

Dean is ready when Cas' arm gives out and sends Cas toppling towards him, catching his friend's shoulder and lowering him back down.

"Perhaps... a little sleep..."

"Yeah," Dean agrees, keeping a hand on Cas' shoulder as his breathing calms. 

"Do you..." Cas breathes. "Do you count sheep?"

"Uuuh..." Unexpected. Dean takes the randomness of the question as a sign Cas is really on the verge of falling asleep this time. "Nah, not so much. Some people do though, I guess."

A pause.

"Where do you find them?"

Cas' voice is almost a whisper now, thick with sleep, but the question is so earnest it surprises a laugh out of Dean.

"Dude, it—it's a _saying_ , you moron, you don't..." he chuckles. "You imagine them, you know?"

"Oh."

Cas' eyes flicker.

"Why sheep?" he asks after a moment and Dean shakes his head, still smiling, at the way Cas just isn't letting this go.

"I don't know."

They breathe quietly for a while, Cas continuing to blink at the ceiling. He's  
right on the edge of drifting off by Dean's reckoning, but seems to be fighting it for some reason. 

"I'll try it," he says eventually. "Perhaps... perhaps it will help..." He turns his head and catches Dean's eye, affecting a conspiratorial whisper that is, ironically, louder than his previous ones. "I don't always care for sleeping... I have unpleasant dreams..."

The confession makes Dean's chest ache and his fingers press tighter round Cas' shoulder.

"I'll wake you up if you do," he promises and for a moment Cas' unfocused eyes light up in a warm mix of gratitude and relief. Only to soon darken with worry, Cas' forehead creasing up and stretching his bandage again.

"But... but Dean you, you shouldn't stay..."

"Of course I'll stay, man. Come on, I'm not just gonna leave you here."

Cas' eyes are drooping so low Dean's not sure he's even seeing with them anymore. Not sure he's even properly awake anymore.

"But the angels..." Cas mutters. "I'm a danger... Sam..."

Just the name is enough to make Dean feel winded, all his breath stolen from him in an instant. It takes a couple of tries to get his throat working again to form a reply.

"That... that doesn't matter anymore..." 

Cas blinks once. Twice. But can't keep his lids from dropping back down.

"But..." he tries, eyes closed. So terribly human. Vulnerable.

"No." Dean starts forward with sudden vigour, gripping Cas' shoulder tighter. "No, Cas, listen to me. Right now you're my number one, you understand?" Dean leans closer, shifting right to the edge of his chair to position himself over Cas, like a shield. "All that matters is getting you better. I am not gonna leave you, you hear me? You..." His voice breaks. "You're all I've got."

Cas' only response is the even breathing of a man asleep.

\---

The two paramedics in the ambulance had asked Dean a million questions as they moved over Cas' bleeding, barely breathing, form on the gurney. Dean doesn't know how he managed to speak at all, let alone focus enough to provide answers. All he truly recalls is the sudden claustrophobia of that shaking room as the vehicle sped away, sirens in full force. How the sombre expressions on each of the man and woman's faces, how the way they'd shaken their heads each time they'd checked something and muttered stuff like "pulse is weakening" or "lost too much blood," had made the walls of that already cramped space that much tighter, made Dean feel like he couldn't breathe, like he and Cas were going to die together in that horrible, sterile, impersonal tin can. He remembers thinking that the ambulance had been a mistake, that he needed to get Cas out. Because Cas was an angel, and if he was going to die it should be under open sky and not in a cage.

Then the man on Cas' far side had prepped a syringe—Dean has a vague memory of a question about allergies, a weak "I don't know I don't... I don't know" in response. The guy had used a tiny cloth taken from a packet to sterilise the crook of Cas' elbow—Cas' shirt, or the torn and bloody wreck that was left of it, long since removed to expose the extent of his injuries—and pressed the needle into the skin.

That was as far as he got.

Cas' hand moved like lightening, crushing the guy's fingers bad enough to make him cry out as Cas snatched the syringe away. Before the poor medic could even process what was happening Cas had lunged forward and backhanded him hard across the face, knocking the guy out cold, various bits of equipment raining down on him as he slumped against the ambulance wall.

"Hey! Take it easy, sir, we're just trying to—" the girl had started, dropping the bandages she'd been unravelling and leaning in. Intending to rest Cas back on the gurney, Dean supposed. Assuming his injuries would have zapped his strength, especially after the effort it must have taken to knock out her colleague.

But she'd underestimated Cas. 

Perhaps it was adrenaline, or perhaps it was the new grace Cas had talked about at play, but Cas had leapt right off the gurney and knocked her back as well. She'd tumbled into the corner and Cas had turned to face her, lifting the syringe he still carried while she moaned and rubbed her head.

It all happened so fast Dean had done little at that point but stand there in the space between the end of the gurney and the ambulance doors, hunched over to accommodate the vehicle's low ceiling and gawking. Seeing the way Cas was advancing on the fallen girl was what finally spurred Dean into action, making him rush forward and grab Cas' shoulder.

He'd managed a "Cas, wait—" that was instantly cut off by Cas spinning round and landing a furious punch to his face. Dean's sure he'd felt the black eye swelling up within seconds of the hit. Then there'd been an arm across his chest slamming him into the ambulance wall and pressing up into his neck.

Even as Dean choked, hands scrambling for purchase round Cas' forearm, he remembers sticky warmth seeping into his shirt from his friend's wounds. Remembers the way the gash on Cas' face had still been wet and dripping, Cas' eyes wide and bloodshot. The grime and the blood and that slightly crazed 'here's Johnny' look had made Cas look more demonic than angel.

"Don't touch me!" Cas shouted. "Where's Malachi? Where are the others?"

The threatening jab of the needle Cas was still wielding, nicking the skin of Dean's jaw, had hardly registered. Cas' grip was like a vice and Dean had already grown light-headed from his struggle for air.

"C—C—C—" 

Awareness of how badly he was strangling his captive seemed to shock Cas, making him blink and shake his head. If Dean were the angel Cas supposed him, Dean figured, then a little absence of oxygen shouldn't have mattered. Faced with this contradiction to his understanding, Cas had dropped Dean and backed away, the fear and fight in his expression replaced by growing horror.

Not that Dean got much of a chance to analyse the subtleties of Cas' feelings. He'd been too busy coughing and spluttering around the sudden influx of air back into his lungs, unsure whether the burn in his throat that proved he'd cheated death, yet again, was a blessing or a curse. Because while grateful to still be alive, immensely grateful, he hadn't wanted to die, Dean couldn't stop the fleeting thought that his survival was a mistake. That he didn't deserve the relief, however painful, of fresh air, while other people, better people, were dead or dying because of him.

"Cas it—" Cough. "Cas it's okay." Cough. "You're okay." Dean finally managed to get control of himself enough to look up and found Cas in a defensive stance, syringe still raised but seemingly more as a precaution than a means of attack. "We're just—" Small gasp. Dean lifted a hand, palm out, to try and show he meant no harm. "We're just trying to help."

Cas had narrowed his eyes, suspicious, but only for a moment. Because as he looked Dean over the truth had dawned on him, leaving him stricken.

"Dean?"

Before Dean could answer, the female paramedic appeared at Cas' shoulder and quickly slipped another needle into Cas' neck, pushed the plunger and pulled it out again. All in a matter of seconds. Slick and professional.

Cas moved on instinct, twisting round to strike his attacker with his own weapon. But Dean had hurried forward to stop him, grabbing Cas' wrist below where he held his syringe to keep it from finding its mark.

"Whoa, whoa. She's not the enemy, okay?"

The look of hurt and betrayal Cas had given him was perhaps the worst part of it all, but it hadn't lingered, because seconds later Cas was swaying and falling to his knees with a groan, syringe dropping from his fingers as they turned slack. Dean had dropped down with him, still clutching Cas' arm. Seeing the strength drain from him so completely, _feeling_ Cas' fight ebb away, twisted knots in Dean's stomach and left a bad taste in his mouth. 

It wasn't right. Nothing about this was right.

Dean remembers turning on the paramedic in anger.

"What the hell did you give him?!"

"Just a sedative," was the calm reply, no anger or defence on the girl's part. And that was despite the bruising already showing on her cheek from where Cas had hit her. "It's dangerous for him to be moving like this. We need to lie him down. He needs stitches. A blood transfusion. Stress like this, it could kill him, do you understand?"

Her care not only evaporated Dean's anger, but left a sick guilt in its place. Because of course she'd been trying to help, in the only way she could. Cas had been hurting himself as much as others, and with one person already unconscious because of him she couldn't trust that Dean would be able to calm him. She'd done what she had to. And been pretty fucking brave, heroic even, doing so, considering the risk it put her in. 

"Dean, I—Dean..."

There's more guilt in the memory of Cas' weak and frightened pleas—why had he wasted time with pointless anger at the paramedic when Cas should have been his priority?

"I feel strange... what...?"

"It's okay, you're okay," Dean had repeated, mind a blank for anything else to say. Stupid, worthless lies.

And Cas hadn't been comforted. Not with the effects of the sedative making him continue to sway. He'd shaken his head again and again and Dean had suffered enough druggings, both medical and supernatural, in his time, to know all too well the woozy, disorientating feeling that must have been encroaching on his friend in that moment. It was frightening for anyone to find their body unresponsive, seeming to work against them. Dean couldn't imagine what it must be like for someone only just getting to grips with having a body of their own in the first place.

He'd reached out on instinct, cupping a hand round the side of Cas' face to hold him steady, to try and make the slide into unconsciousness a little easier. Had made sure to hold Cas' gaze when he spoke again, trying to anchor him, infusing his words with a confidence completely alien to his true feelings.

"Trust me."

There was a moment of stillness. Cas staring into him. 

Then a nod that dropped into something deeper, Cas relaxing into Dean's arms. Trusting him. Like Sam, when Dean sent an angel to heal him. Like Kevin, when Dean promised him a home. Not knowing the cost was possession. Not knowing his new family came with hidden danger. 

Trust freely given. Earned through lies. 

Lies and secrets that had come with such cost.

 _Trust me_ , he'd begged them. _I know best_.

And wasn't that the biggest lie of all?

\---

The smell of burning meat fills Dean's nostrils. No. Not meat. Not meat at all. Just like it's not his brother stepping away from the falling body. Leaving him alone. Gone.

Gasping awake, it takes a moment for Dean to reorientate himself, to replace the visceral horror of his memory with the clinical white of the hospital. He grips the wooden sides of the chair—'his' chair, practically, at this point—with both hands and steadies himself.

It's okay, he tells himself. Well, it's not, he corrects. But at least he's got Cas.

He glances up for reassurance, and feels his blood run icy with panic at the sight of sheets pulled back over an empty bed. Can't even move, just sits there wide eyed and frozen.

Until a flushing from the adjoining bathroom followed by running water turns his head.

A very real, very awake and very alive Cas emerges from the doorway a moment later and Dean sags back into the chair's frame. 

Cas is decked in a flimsy, faded blue hospital gown, with a weird new bandage around his head. It doesn't look very secure and has a slight pinkish tinge to it. But whatever, he's out of bed and walking, that's a good sign, right?

When Cas turns and notices Dean staring at him he smiles, full and strong, lighting up his face. His _unblemished_ face, Dean realises. Which is as fantastic as it is impossible.

"You're awake," Cas notes, his voice returned to its usual, healthy, low rumble.

"Could say the same thing," Dean answers, jumping to his feet and moving closer. Yup. Yup, the skin on Cas' face is completely clear. "And you're... you..." He waves a hand, circling just shy of Cas' cheek where he remembers a red gash. Not deep enough for stitches, but still in the process of scabbing over the last time he'd seen it. "Jesus, how long was I out?"

Cas' smile inches higher, his eyes sparkling.

"It's been eight, perhaps nine hours," he replies. "The doctors said I wasn't the only one who needed rest. I thought it best not to wake you."

Dean opens his mouth to protest—because god knows what could have happened while he was sleeping and off guard. What if Malachi or Bartholomew had attacked? What if Sam...?

But he closes his mouth and rolls his eyes instead. Cas had meant it as a kindness, and it does feel good to have what amounts to a full night's sleep under his belt.

"Thanks..." he mutters. "But dude, that's not even a full day. How are you—?"

He waves a hand again and Cas inclines his head, acknowledging the question. The move makes the bandage on his head shift and dip at an angle. Geeze, the thing looks like it's made of paper. Dean's gonna have to talk to a nurse about that.

"I told you, Dean," Cas tells him. "I _have_ grace. It just..." His eyes flick to the side, lips pressing together as he puffs an embarrassed, exasperated, sigh through his nose. "It just doesn't always... work... at the moment." He jerks his head round quickly in his hurry to continue in a more reassuring fashion, making the pink thing round his head shift again and Dean realises it isn't even attached to him. And the top of it is serrated or something. What? "But it is healing me. I am recovering faster than an ordinary human. One of the nurses called it a miracle." He flashes another bright smile, which dips only slightly with his next sigh. "Although, as you can see, I am nonetheless once again subject to the human condition." He lifts a hand to indicate the bathroom.

Dean nods absently, distracted from his friend's impatience with human biology by the puzzle of what the fuck _is_ on his head. Now he's looking closely he can see it's _definitely_ pink, _definitely_ paper and _definitely_ cut into triangles at the top, kind of like a—

"Uuuuh," Dean starts, pointing at the thing as he finally recognises it for what it is. "What's with the paper crown?"

The question receives a head tilt in response and Cas lifts a hand. The lines stacking up across his, in fact bandage- _less_ Dean can see now, forehead clear as his fingers reach the paper, the pressure of the touch crumpling it a little on one side.

"Ah." A breath of laughter escapes Cas' next smile. "I'd forgotten." He pulls the thing off and flattens and folds it in his hands. "One of the nurses, her name was Julia, bought a paper contraption with my lunch. This was inside."

"Jules," Dean nods, recognising the nurse Cas means. A bubbly girl with dark skin and a ponytail. "The British chick. But... why...?"

"She said it was to make the occasion more festive," Cas supplies. "And... something about being homesick for her country's traditions. I admit I... didn't quite understand. But she was kind, and she stayed to talk with me as I ate. It was pleasant."

Part of Dean thinks he should be kind of mad that Cas was getting some one-on-one time with a hot girl while Dean was passed out in the same room. But it's not that part of Cas' story Dean latches on to.

"Festive?" he repeats. 

Because why would a meal need to be festive? Unless—he glances round, catching sight of some red and gold tinsel artfully positioned round the outside of the window frame in the door to Cas' room, one of the nurses walks by in a red hat with white trim and bobble and Dean thinks he can glimpse green branches a little further down the corridor, gleaming baubles hanging down from them.

"It's Christmas," he says. Stunned. When did that happen?

Oblivious to Dean's shock, Cas merely hums in agreement, moving to place the folded hat on top of the cabinet beside the bed, next to the glass and pitcher of water there. He taps his fingers against the fragile paper and looks to the distance, the curve of his lips growing softer.

"Yes. The ways you choose to celebrate the birth of Christ are certainly inventive." 

"Yeah, well... Christmas ain't really about that so much these days." It hits Dean occasionally that, being an angel, Cas probably played a part in some of those Sunday School stories Pastor Jim used to teach him and Sam about. And it's been on the tip of his tongue more than once to ask Cas about all that. Like, if Eve were a babe, or if Sodom and Gomorrah was really such a craphole. He can't say the thought that maybe Cas was there for the original nativity hasn't crossed his mind either, and it's tempting to take the chance and ask now. Find out if all that about the donkey and the star was real or Kindergarten bullcrap, or if Cas knew old JC back in the day. But Dean's still getting to grips with the fact that it's holiday season at all. Uncovering theological truths aren't big on his agenda. So he lets the moment pass. "I mean, uh, no offense," he adds, just in case Cas and Jesus _were_ tight or something. "At least, not the tree and the presents and all that. And whatever Jules gave you, with the hat." And what the fuck _is_ that about? Brits are weird.

"Oh, I'm aware." Cas scratches his side as he turns, a flicker of discomfort crossing his face. 

Dean notices the hospital gown spilt at the back from the move, exposing a slither of Cas' naked waist and the fact that it's merely one precarious cord that's keeping the outfit together. When they get out of here he's putting a whole new wardrobe together for the guy, Dean tells himself. Not more of his and Sam's old knock offs, like the ones he'd stuffed in the hastily made duffle the night he'd asked Cas to leave, along with some toothpaste, a few candy bars and the various fake IDs he'd had made up for Cas over the years. No. This time he's doing things right. 

"What you call Christmas has seen many incarnations over the years, it's far more than just a Christian holiday," Cas continues, reaching back to the cabinet and resting his hand on the edge. He does it casually enough, but it doesn't escape Dean's notice how his fingers grip the wood, Cas' body leaning against it for support. "To be honest, I was surprised when you decided to celebrate Christ's birth at all. But then I suppose it is one of the more notable of occurrences that were included in your bible." He leans forward, raising an eyebrow. "If you knew what was left out, your holidays would be very different."

The camaraderie behind Cas' hinting, his willingness to share with Dean secrets of his past, makes Dean smile. Unbidden. Like in that bar not so long ago, when they'd been reminiscing together. Cas so eager to buy them drinks. So openly and unabashedly _happy_ to be spending time with Dean and Sam again, so clearly wishing to share in the human experience with them. How could Dean not respond in kind, when he wanted just the same? For one brief, glorious moment at that table the three of them had truly been a family.

And, like it had then, the ease in which Cas fits in his life tastes once again bittersweet. Once again something Dean knows he won't get the chance to savour. Not because he feels compelled to give it up—another sacrifice made for the sake of his brother—not this time, but because Cas himself might well reject Dean once he knows the truth. Would have every right.

But... not yet. Not just yet.

"Is that so?" Dean asks, encouraging more.

The way Cas' eyes shine at the interest warms Dean deep. A comfort he thought he'd never know again.

"I'll have to tell you, sometime," Cas grins. "But for now, I know that for many Christmas is about family. Which is why you don't have to stay here, Dean."

"...what?" Mentally reeling from the conversational shift, Dean can only shake his head.

"I don't mind. It's only right you should be with your family at Christmas. Sam did mention, once, that it was your favourite holiday, I believe."

The reference to Sam claws at Dean like a pack of hellhounds, ripping him apart. Memories making his heart start to pound. Sam waiting beside a stolen tree with eggnog and gas station gifts. A Christmas as heartbreaking as it was heartwarming, and probably still Dean's favourite. 

He tries to clamp down on the half-baked plans he'd started to make on and off for this year, but it's too late. He's already remembering the corner of the bunker library he'd decided would be the perfect spot for the tree. How he'd planned to find some kind of magic telephone line to Oz, tell Charlie to bring Dorothy as a plus one and maybe ask what the hell Magic the Gathering was and where he could buy it. How he'd figured that surely, surely, Zeke would be gone by then, or would be understanding enough to let Cas back for a day or two. 

The dark silence of the Men of Letters' corridors as Dean had last seen them loom out of the homely image in terrifying contrast. The very last place Dean wishes to be.

"I don't—that was just—" he stammers. "Cas, _you're_ family. Okay? How many times have I gotta tell you?"

But Cas is a dog with a bone.

"I appreciate the sentiment, Dean. I do. And I feel the same. But I would not have you sacrifice your time with Sam for me."

"I told you, that doesn't matter any more."

It's only after Dean says this he considers that Cas might have fallen asleep before hearing that part of their last conversation. Apparently not, however, as Cas' next words prove.

"I know you said that. But—"

"No, no!" Dean cuts in, letting the hot burn of anger take over. "I _meant_ what I said, okay?" He surges forward, pointing a finger at Cas for emphasis. "You're all that matters now. I—I'm not gonna leave you, or let you go this alone. Not this time!"

Cas leans back a little, unnerved, creases stacking up between his eyebrows as he starts to frown. His eyes lock into Dean's, narrowing in question, then, after a moment, his face clears and he presses his lips together with a sigh.

"You blame yourself for my condition."

Déjà vu.

_You think this is... your fault?_

Dean waves a hand like he's trying to swat a fly. No, damn it, this isn't the same.

"Of course I do," he snaps. "Because this one's on me."

The quirk of Cas' lips only increases Dean's frustration.

"I chose to take on this new grace, and I'm the one who fought Malachi before I was ready, not you," Cas insists. "You are not responsible for my recklessness."

"But I _am_ the reason you've been out there alone. I—I should never have told you to leave the bunker."

I never _wanted_ you to leave, Dean wants to add. But can't seem to find the words.

"But you had to. For Sam."

"Yeah, I... I thought that, but—" Dean can't get those words out either. He shakes his head and changes tact. "But look at you, man." He waves a hand up and down Cas' body, noting his friend's bare ankles and feet for the first time. A sight that, absurdly, sends a flush of embarrassment up Dean's neck. It feels shockingly intimate, somehow, in a way the thin gown with its loosely tied cord hadn't, knowing Cas is bare from his shins down. Bare, perhaps, from the waist down beneath the faded, swaying cotton. "You're stitched up. You're on meds. You're barely strong enough to stand for god's sake!" He gestures at the hand Cas is still using to grip the cabinet, at the way his arm is starting to shake from the effort. "I... I should have done more, I should have been helping you."

Cas' eyes harden.

"Do you consider me so incompetent?"

"No, of course not, I just—"

There's a quiet splash as the water in the pitcher jostles about, disturbed by the over exuberant push behind him Cas uses to propel himself forward.

"This may come as a shock to you, Dean, but I existed quite successfully for eons before we met." Dean can't help but flinch away, the infirmity of Cas' body forgotten. Instead Dean finds himself glancing over Cas' shoulder, half expecting to see the shadow of wings there. Waiting for the crackle of energy that accompanies a show of grace. "And I survived perfectly well as a human _without_ your aid. I am not a child. I can manage by myself. I don't need you to hold my hand."

Which is the exact moment that Cas, as though on cue, flinches down his right side, hand flying instinctively to the place of hurt. A move that leaves him unbalanced, other hand stretching out to cushion his inevitable fall. Inevitable, that is, had Dean not been reaching out as well, gripping Cas' open hand in his own and holding him steady.

Anger drains away as Cas stares at their touching palms. Dean can feel it in the way Cas relaxes into the hold, breath that had become a brief and laboured hissing growing calm again.

"Admittedly, this instance has been... beneficial," Cas concedes.

Biting back a sarcastic response, Dean guides Cas to the bed and helps sit him down on it. 

"So, I am, perhaps, a little unsteady."

Dean glares.

"But I am coping. Enough for you to spare a few days to celebrate Christmas with your brother." 

Even shaking on the edge of the bed like he is, hospital gown looking as thin and pathetic a covering as the stupid paper hat had been, Cas' eyes gleam. He's weak as a fucking kitten, more vulnerable than Dean's ever seen him, and yet Dean knows better than to think he can break Cas' resolve in this.

Which means this is it. He's out of time. This is when he has to tell Cas everything. There's no other way. The truth of it makes Dean's palms itch with sweat and he rubs them viciously down the side of his jeans.

Was it too much to ask for just a few hours of peace together?

Stupid question.

"And Kevin, of course," Cas adds. "It would be good for him, I think, to have some time off. I... I'm starting to think I have been too hard on him in the past." Cas looks away with a self-depreciating smile that cuts through Dean like a knife in butter. "He is more than a prophet. During my time as a human I have started to understand the importance of—of experiencing life beyond duty. He should have the chance to live—"

"Kevin's dead."

Dean's voice shakes as he says it, just hearing the reality of the thing enough to make all the walls he'd built up to distance himself from the loss start to crumble. But he has to speak up, he _has_ to. Can't let Cas continue to give voice to the life the kid should be living, the life they never let him have. A crime they can't ever, _ever_ , make up for now.

The words make Cas jolt, his own dying a stuttering death on his lips. A cloud of shock and confusion falls across his face in an instant, worry lines deepening over his brow as he looks up and, presumably, reads the truth in Dean's expression.

"But... how?" he breathes. 

Dean imagines Cas' eyes, currently wide in question, turning narrow, lip curling up in disgust. He swallows. Turns and paces away. If this is to be the moment where he finally loses _everything_ , he can at least make it so he doesn't have to see it happen.

"I... I did something... I..." he chokes, pausing at the end of the bed to grip the metal frame, fingers brushing the clipboard with its chicken scratch details of Cas' medication hanging there. The wooden board hits the poles with a clatter. "I screwed up, Cas. I made a bad call. And Kevin paid for it... Sam too."

" _Sam's dead?_ " 

The pure horror in Cas' voice, the pre-emptive grief, is another stab to Dean's heart. He hadn't even _thought_ about how that loss might affect Cas. It's so easy to forget Sam isn't his alone to love and to mourn.

"Maybe..." Dean closes his eyes, trying to blot out the vision of Sam as he'd last seen him. Trying not to hear, as he has in all his nightmares since, 'Ezekiel's' words playing over and over. _There is no more Sam._ "Maybe worse, I don't—I don't know—I—"

He runs his free hand, the one that isn't curling round the bed frame tight enough to turn his fingers numb, through his hair. Finds his arm is shaking too badly for it and has to stop. Funny—now who's the one too weak to support himself?

"To be honest—" Dean almost breaks into pained laughter at the irony of his choice of phrase. Stopping himself at an unhappy smile and shake of his head. "—I'm barely holding it together here..."

Old springs squeak behind him as Cas gets to his feet, and then there are gentle hands turning him round. There's more weight in the way Cas holds his upper arms than there should be—Dean still something of a crutch. But there's also care in the way Cas stokes his thumbs up and down, giving Dean courage to meet Cas' eye as he blinks his own open again.

Vision blurs at first, but clears after a couple of blinks, and Dean holds on to Cas' gaze as surely as Cas is holding to him.

"Tell me," Cas says, with a softness in his tone to match his eyes. A softness that speaks of hope and help and makes Dean think he might not have to suffer another loss after all. "Tell me everything."

And so, with his heart in his throat the whole time, Dean does.

\---

When they get back to the bunker, Dean doesn't have time to fear the black emptiness of the place, or marvel that Cas is walking inside beside him. Not with Cas still shaky on his feet. Too soon in his recovery to be discharged really, but Cas had insisted. To the point where Dean had to sneak them out of the hospital, because it was easier than fighting the staff about it.

A risky decision for Cas' health and safety, but it had proven something of a blessing on the journey down, giving both of them a constant stream of practical concerns. Was Cas comfortable? Was his seatbelt too tight? Did he need to eat or sleep? Plenty of things to keep their minds and conversation from the shadow of Kevin's death. Of Dean's betrayal.

The lights have only just started heating up, illuminating each part of the facility one by one with their customary whir and clunk, and Cas is already struggling for breath, grasping the banister at the top of the balcony and panting over it.

Dean rests a hand on his back, standing ready in case Cas' legs give out again, like they had during his climb from the car. The deep, shuddering breaths persist far beyond any struggle Cas has shown so far, making Dean's chest tight.

"This was a mistake," he mutters. "You should have stayed at the hospital."

"No." Cas shakes his head so vigorously Dean fears his body will collapse from the effort and reaches out to grip the cuff folded back above Cas' wrist just in case. The old zip up hoodie Dean had dug out of the Impala's trunk for his friend would have hung loose from Cas at any time - as all Sam's clothes do on others - but with Cas pale and shaking, cheeks sunken in after days of liquid food, it seems to swamp him. Like a child in his parent's coat. Small and fragile. "No," Cas gasps again, eyes following the trail of lights as they move down the War Room and library. "I couldn't have stayed there. Not knowing the danger Sam is in. I cannot sit idle while the people I care about suffer, not anymore. I shied away too long at the Gas and Sip, I do not plan to make that mistake again."

"Hey, hey." Dean leans over the banister at Cas' side, twisting the sleeve of the hoodie between his fingers. "That wasn't shying away. You had something there. No one can blame you for trying to make a life for yourself."

Cas manages to curb his gasping enough to raise an eyebrow in Dean's direction.

"You were the one saying the job was beneath me."

"I didn't... I didn't say _that_ ," Dean protests, though he knows full well he'd implied exactly that and then some. Cas lifts both eyebrows, disbelieving. "Okay. Okay," Dean concedes. "But I talk crap sometimes. And... And the truth is I... I guess I was kinda mad to see you doing so well, you know... without me..." Dean sucks in his bottom lip. Turns away. What he'd started as a way of calming Cas down, hoping to distract from his pain for a moment, is turning decidedly personal. He should stop, but it's like rolling down a hill, forward momentum keeping the words tumbling out. "It was only supposed to be temporary, you living away from here. I was _gonna_ ask you back, I—I got a whole fucking room picked out for you. You were always supposed to come back. Just as soon as..." He swallows. "I never stopped to think that maybe you wouldn't want to. Wouldn't need to. Not until I saw you in there all 'human dignity' and what-the-fuck-ever." He lets go of Cas' sleeve to wave a hand, like he's trying to pluck the whole crappy speech out of the air so he can tear it up. "Look, all I'm saying is, you got nothing to be ashamed of here, man. Not you. Not for any of this. It was a good life you had, and it wasn't wrong to have it."

This is as close as they've got to talking about the fallout Dean's ill-advised deal with 'Zeke' had put on Cas. After Dean's confession Cas' focus had been solely on Sam and how to help him and Dean hadn't argued with that. Doesn't want to now, because what's the point in forcing judgement if he doesn't have to? And yet, part of Dean feels like a man on trial, waiting on a verdict.

And waiting has never been Dean's forte. 

"It _was_ a good life." There's a smile on Cas' face when Dean glances back. Wistful, he thinks. "With good people. I won't forget it." Cas' breathing seems easier now, thank god, and he stands up straight, hold on the banister loosening. "But you were right about one thing." Cas turns to Dean and his eyes are warm. A comfort, but one Dean doesn't dare take to heart. Doesn't dare read the verdict he's waiting on into. "It was not _my_ life."

"Yeah? So, what is the life for you, Cas? You seemed pretty clear before on wanting it _not_ to be as an angel."

Cas nods, able now to step away from the banister and stand alone. It's with reluctance that Dean draws his hand from his friend's back, allowing him to move unsupported once more.

"I don't know. I will know it, perhaps, when I find it..." He sucks in a breath. Let's it out again slowly. "But for now, circumstances require me to be an angel. And so I am. I think, perhaps, I never stopped being one, not truly... And it's not so terrible. I was created a warrior of Heaven, after all. For better or worse, it's a part of who I am and always will be. There is a certain... satisfaction, in taking on the mantle once more."

Dean thinks of his last words shared with Robin. How happy she'd been working the family business, and how she'd seen the same fulfilment in him, despite their whispered confessions as kids, their longing to escape the lives mapped out for them. 

"I, uh, I think I know what you mean..." he says. But is it really affinity he can hear in Cas' voice, or is he just projecting? "I... I'm sorry, though. For the way this turned out. For... For dragging you here... You've got enough on your plate without having to clean up my mess..."

Shaking his head, Dean trails off. Time to move on. Only a touch to his shoulder stops him, making him look up again in surprise. Dean stands to attention as Cas stares into him. Looks like the jury's in.

"No matter where my life takes me, you and Sam will _always_ be part of it," Cas tells him. "That much, at least, I know. I'm here because I choose to be." Without letting go of Dean, Cas moves forward towards the staircase, hand sliding to Dean's upper arm and pulling. "Now we should hurry. It's not too late for us to fix this." 

_Us._

_We._

The pronouns loosen something in Dean, helping him too to breathe easier. He doesn't presume to call it forgiveness, but as judgements go it seems favourable.

Kind as his friend's words are, though - and Dean isn't oblivious to the deeper meaning behind Cas' turn of phrase - Dean knows the truth is it's far too late to fix anything. Even if they do get Sam back, he let this thing with 'Zeke' go on too long. Freeing Sam can't reverse the lies and betrayal. And _nothing_ can fix what happened to Kevin. 

No. There's no coming back from this.

It's broken.

Disjointed sentences filter back to Dean as he follows Cas through the bunker. Something about ingredients. A spell to summon an angel by their vessel. A plan to modify a sigil. 

Though sketchy on the details, needing ingredients means the store room, so Dean takes over readily enough to lead the way when Cas gets lost.

There's a light on in the kitchen as they pass with the clink of cutlery and china coming from inside. Kevin making more coffee, Dean thinks, making a note to tell the kid to lay off the caffeine, it's not good for him to keep -

The error of his thoughts pulls Dean up short. A stop so sudden that Cas, unaware Dean is no longer moving, crashes into him. But there's no time to feel guilty about the bitten down noise of pain Cas makes. Instead, Dean puts a finger to his lips to tell Cas to be quiet and pulls a gun from his jacket.

Cas frowns, but nods his understanding, still wincing a little as he follows Dean's slow arc towards the kitchen in silence.

They flatten themselves against the wall beside the open door - Dean first, Cas behind him - and listen. More clinking. The shuffle of footsteps. Along the far counter by Dean's estimate. He holds up a hand, palm flat, to indicate Cas should wait, lifts his gun ready, takes a breath, and spins into the room.

"Hello boys," Crowley says without turning. "Want a cup?"

He waves a hand at a steaming mug resting on the sideboard, then busies himself at the sink, turning the faucet so a stream of running water erupts from it. Dean can't see what the demon places underneath, but a moment later Crowley positions a dripping teaspoon delicately on the draining board and cuts the water off.

"What are you doing here?" Dean snaps, keeping his gun raised and ready, though more out of habit than as a threat. The bullets in this one won't do squat to a demon, and ten to one Crowley knows that. But then again, there's always a chance he might suspect Dean's packing salt and back off.

"What does it look like?" Crowley answers, reaching for the mug and turning with it in his hand, radiating that infuriating blend of smugness and superiority that no amount of torture or neglect seems able to break. "I'm making a cup of tea." He pulls on a string hanging from the side of the cup, lifting out a sodden bag of what does smell distinctly like tea leaves and waves it in the air for a moment in support of his claim. More notable to Dean is the lack of shackles over the demon's wrists. Apparently unsatisfied with the response to his display, Crowley rolls his eyes and tuts at Dean, before dropping the bag neatly into the garbage disposal under the sink. "We're out of Earl Grey," he notes, taking a sip. "Be a love and pick up some next time you're out, would you?"

"You're allowing him freedom of your home now?" a voice mutters, disapproving, in Dean's ear, making him jump.

"Cas, I told you to stay outside," Dean hisses back. "And no, I'm not." He waves the gun in Crowley's direction. "How'd you get out of the dungeon?"

"Oh, put that down before you strain something." Crowley leans back against the kitchen counter like he hasn't a care in the world, casually brushing some lint off his—surprisingly crisp and clean now Dean thinks about it—suit. The guy had been a mess the last Dean saw him, clothes torn and spotted with blood, starting to stink a little from being denied access to any means of personal hygiene for weeks on end. Must have used some demon mojo to spruce up. Which means he has access to his demon mojo. "I mean honestly, what are you planning to do? Frighten me back into captivity with loud noises?"

Dean looks from Crowley to his gun, suddenly self-conscious. Because it's true—loud noises are all the weapon's good for here. He returns the gun to the strap in his jacket, feeling sheepish.

"And as to how I got out. You never put me back in."

"What?! Yes I—"

"After our failed business transaction over the dearly departed Kevin Tran—" Dean feels Cas' eyes on him at that but doesn't look. Not because he fears more disapproval, he's more than happy to stand his ground against it over this, but in case of a resurgence of the _pity_ that had flickered in Cas back at the hospital when Dean first told him the truth of things. "—you got a bit... distracted. Escorted me back to my former living quarters, but neglected to tuck me in."

No, surely he'd...? But then, after Kevin things _had_ been such a blur. Dean tries to picture locking Crowley down after their dealing went sour. Tries to visualise the Devil's Trap, whether he locked the door after him when he left. He'd thrown Crowley back... and had there maybe been a problem there? Crowley falling, struggling to get up again... powder on his hands that Dean had mistaken for dirt? 

Even the smallest alteration to a sigil can change a spell—keep a brother trapped, or set a demon free.

Dean grits his teeth, trying to bite back a sigh. How could he be so stupid?

"I don't understand..." Cas starts. "If you were able to free yourself... why are you still here?"

For the first time since their arrival Crowley's smirk begins to falter.

"Because that's just it, isn't it?" he answers, pushing off the counter and gripping his mug in both hands, fingernails tapping a discordant rhythm over the painted side. "I'm _not_ free. I take one step out of here and Abaddon's people descend on me like a pack of fucking piranhas. Where _else_ am I going to go?"

By the end of the sob story Crowley's practically pouting and part of Dean wants to gloat back. To reveal in the reversal, in knowing that, despite his posturing, Crowley is _dependent_ on him right now. As trapped outside of the dungeon as he was in, and almost as declawed—because even with his powers intact, using them against Dean and Cas would be a dumbass move, bordering on suicidal. With either of them dead that's Crowley's link to the outside world severed. And even if he does snap and hurts one of them, there's only so many places to hide in an underground facility, and this one happens to be stocked with all manner of things designed expressly to kill or contain dark creatures like him.

But fuck it, they don't have time for this. It's enough to understand that, for the moment, Crowley's not a threat.

"Look, whatever," Dean mutters. "Just... don't break anything. Come on..." This last is addressed to Cas, who is still eyeing Crowley wearily. Dean pats his arm, making Cas blink, and nods to the door.

Never one to end a scene without having the last word, if he can help it, Crowley pipes up again just as Cas is turning to follow Dean outside.

"Looking a bit under the weather there, Castiel. What's the matter? Disagree with something you ate?"

It's a surprise when Cas takes the bait, stopping and turning back. But then, he and Crowley have 'history' now. A fact Dean is always more than happy to forget. He supposes that might make Crowley more likely to get under Cas' skin than most. At least Cas is scowling as he answers.

"What are you talking about?"

"Oh, nothing." Crowley smirks round his next sip of tea. "Just that, well, you can't just go around drinking down any old grace that takes your fancy and not expect a few... repercussions, that's all."

Cas' eyes narrow.

"How did you—? Aaargh!"

This time it isn't a twinge of pain from bruising and uncomfortable stitches, this is Cas doubling over and clutching his stomach in fucking agony.

"Cas!"

Dean rushes forward, but Cas throws out a hand to stop him.

"Dean don't!" he spits out through gritted teeth. "Stay back!"

"What's wrong?!"

"This grace, it—Aaah!" Cas drops to his knees, head bowed, eyes scrunched up tight. His skin looks strange. Whiter than pale. Like someone's upped the contrast. "C—Close—Close your eyes!"

Cas' skin is so bright now it's making Dean's eyes water and that's when he gets it. Understanding comes with a split second to spare, Dean throwing an arm across his face, eyes slamming shut, the very instant a burning white flash of light and heat bursts from Cas' body.

It's over as soon as it started, the cool air and muted light of the kitchen descending like a curtain, and Dean is rushing to where Cas should be before he's even finished blinking his eyes open again.

"Cas? Cas!"

When his hands find Cas' trembling shoulders Dean's first instinct is to draw his friend to him and cling tight. He's so sick of all this crap working to keep Cas away from him, damn it! But the other part of Dean, the part that Dean's taken pains to mould into being all his life, the part that said 'yes, sir!' to his father without question and didn't try to look further than life on the road, knows that embracing a guy on the floor, no matter how manly that embrace might be, is not something a guy like Dean Winchester is supposed to do. So he shakes Cas instead.

"I'm alright. I'm alright," Cas insists beneath the onslaught, grabbing one of Dean's arms to still him. _Managing_ to still Dean with just that one-handed grip.

"What the fuck was that?" Dean yells.

"I lost control for a moment." As Cas lifts his head Dean swears he can see a swirl of iridescence in his eyes. "But I'm alright now. In fact..." Cas pushes, effortlessly, to his feet, pulling Dean up with him. Once up, Cas rolls his shoulders, smiling. "It seems the rest of my wounds have been healed."

"Oh..." Dean can't help taking a step back. The air around Cas seems denser. Like there's an aura of unseen energy there. "Well... great. That's, that's great, right?"

He's just starting a cautious smile of his own when—

"Wrong."

Both Dean and Cas turn to glare at Crowley together.

"How did you know I'd taken on another's grace?" Cas asks.

Crowley's smirking again—never a good sign—as he puts down his cup and saunters forward.

"Oh, _kitten_ ," he says, leaning into Cas' space, eyes on Castiel's as he annunciates each syllable of the endearment. Cas presses his lips together and turns his face away. "You think during our time together I didn't grow _intimately_ familiar with the different parts of you?"

Dean knows he's talking bullshit. He's _Crowley_ , getting people riled up is his favourite pastime. But there's something in the way Cas' face shuts down at the implications that gives Dean unpleasant thoughts nevertheless. 

"I know the aroma of your grace, sweetheart," Crowley continues. "And the stench you're giving off now isn't it."

There's murder in Cas' eyes when he looks back.

"Mine or not, it is still _grace_. And you would do well not to anger me, least I use it on _you_."

It's a nice threat. Enough to give Dean tingles. Score one to Cas, he thinks with a grin.

Only far from being defeated, Crowley crows with laughter.

"You really have no idea what you've done to yourself, do you?"

"And what would you know of the workings of angel grace?"

"Oh, I know more than you think."

There stare each other down for moment. Then Cas scoffs.

"Come on, Dean," he says, turning his back on Crowley and making for the door. "He is playing us."

But Dean's not so sure. He's seen a lot of idle mind games from Crowley recently—locked up in a dungeon it was pretty much all the demon could do. It's made Dean accustom to the ways Crowley talks and moves and smiles when he's just spinning his wheels. Crowley's posture now seems... different. His back is straight, shoulders forward, chin up. He's flaunting something. The fact that he knows more than they do, perhaps. 

And with Cas' wellbeing on the line Dean isn't willing to risk not knowing, even if asking costs him some pride.

"Wait," he tells Cas, ignoring the look of protest his friend shoots his way and taking a step closer to Crowley. "Okay. I'll bite. What do you know?"

Crowley's lips snake up at the corners, eyes glinting at Dean with triumph, and Dean knows the question's cost him. A small, but telling, show of weakness that the demon will file away so he can use it to fuck with Dean later no doubt. Well, so be it, if that's the cost for information on Cas' life then he'll pay.

"I know that grace isn't universal," Crowley, finally, deigns to answer. "It's what you might call the life blood of an angel. Not a perfect analogy, of course. Drain a human of blood and, well, the consequences are gloriously fatal. Separate an angel from their grace and they keep on ticking. But like blood, each grace has subtle differences."

"I am aware of my own kind's biology," Cas cuts in. "An archangel's grace is different from a soldier's, which is different from a cupid's and so on. That is why we have different abilities."

"Yes, yes," Crowley says, waving a hand dismissively. "But for you rank and file types—" Cas bristles at the description, as does Dean. Whatever Cas is, he's miles beyond 'rank and file' that's for sure. "—you probably think each of you is the same, deep down, don't you? I mean, that's what they tell you in cherub Sunday School, isn't it? All that 'we are legion' bullocks, keeping you all nice and uniform, no tricky individual thoughts threatening to topple the whole system like a pack of cards."

This description must be on the money because Cas struggles for a come back, parting his lips, then closing them again with a frown.

"The... the like Classes of angel all share a common essence, yes that... that is what we were told."

"You were told _wrong_ , pet." Crowley takes a moment to savour Cas' uncertainty, rocking on his heels. "It's true angels of your Class all have the same powers, more or less. But like I said, it's like blood. You've got your As, your Bs, your ABs, positives, negatives, all of that. It's all blood. It all does the same thing. But you need to maintain consistency with your own personal brand. Give an O a dose of AB negative and it's all over." He leans forward, grin reaching from ear to ear. "And darling, whoever you dosed up from... they weren't your type."

Cas doesn't respond, just holds Crowley's gaze, and the demon meets the challenge, his grin never wavering. Sure of himself. 

A cold weight sinks into Dean as he considers that Crowley might be telling the truth.

"What—What would that mean?" he asks. Another show of weakness. Not even the level calm of his voice—the result of years practice keeping neutral in times of stress—can hide that.

"The same as it does for a human body given a bad transfusion," Crowley answers, so fucking smug. "It rejects it. Starts attacking the new stuff. You're looking at fevers, trembling, weakness in the body and finally, well, you know." He nods at Cas. "From the look of it, I'd say our shivering friend here is well on his way."

Though Cas does his best to clasp both his hands together as Dean looks over, he can't hide their tremors, nor the sheen of sweat beading up around his brow. When he does glance Dean's way Dean doesn't know what's worse about the look in Cas' eyes. The fear, or the apology. 

\---

By the evening it's clear Crowley isn't lying. 

Cas gets the shakes so bad sometimes he can't even stand and eventually Dean sets him up in his bedroom. Even through the shaking and the fever Cas makes a point of looking over the gun displays on the walls, the vinyl records on the shelves and the dog-eared photo of Mary Winchester propped up by the bedside. He offers a weak smile, murmurs something about the place being "homely."

At first Dean hadn't worried because the solution seemed obvious. "Just rip the damn thing out" he'd said. Then Cas had sat him down, eyes wet, and explained why that wasn't an option. How he was too weak to even attempt it, that even if he could, as it stood he wasn't strong enough to survive the procedure. Ripping out grace is traumatic, and to an angel in Cas' condition as much of a death sentence as keeping this grace was.

There'd been a "sorry" on the tip of Cas' tongue with every word, gleaming in the shine of his eyes, and Dean couldn't stand that. Cas wasn't the one who had anything to be sorry about here, not a damn thing.

He was the first to suggest the Men of Letters archives, clutching at any and all possible straws that might offer some way out of this nightmare. Cas had been sceptical, but agreed to search through the library with Dean and picked out four or five titles he'd told Dean looked "promising." Dean was practically carrying Cas between the shelves towards the end, which was when he'd made the decision to leave Cas in the bedroom.

Now, hours of failed research later, Dean steps through the open door carrying a glass of water and a heavy heart. 

He'd caught himself many times wishing Sam or Kevin were there to help, not because Dean's bad at research—although he's often found it beneficial to give that impression—but because it's such a long process for him, checking and double checking everything, doggedly working through each and every book that might possibly relate to his topic one by one. Sam and Kevin have a knack for getting their hands on the right book, seemingly by touch or feel or smell or something Dean doesn't know, right away. Or, _had_ a knack, in Kevin's case at least. But what's the use in crying over their absence? Dean knows very well why they aren't here, and whose fault that is.

Cas is sitting with his legs stretched out across the bed when Dean steps inside, extra pillows at his back to keep him propped up against the headboard. He has a slim volume open part way through in his hand, but he isn't reading it. Instead his other hand pinches the bridge of his nose, his eyes screwed up, as he breathes in deep. Waiting out a passing tremor that's making his shoulders shake.

"Hey," Dean greets as the tremor passes. 

There's no attempt to hide how bad things are this time. The slow rise of Cas' head and dull gaze at the doorway suggests Cas is too tired to even try.

He manages a watery smile and "hey" back though. 

"I—I bought you some water."

"Thank you."

Reaching for the glass makes Cas pause and close his eyes. Dizzy, perhaps. So Dean moves in to perch on the bed at Cas' side, pressing the glass into his hand. A couple of sips are all Cas can manage before a new tremor makes him choke. Dean takes the glass back and places it on his bedside cabinet.

Coughing makes the book slip from Cas' fingers onto his lap and Dean picks it up before the pages close and lose his friend's place. The symbols inside are handwritten—a looping, cursive script that's faded with age but still perfectly legible. To anyone who can read it that is, because it's most certainly not English, although some of the dips and whirls do look familiar. 

"Reading anything good?" Dean asks once Cas is breathing easy again, trying to keep things light. To ignore the fact that Cas is literally fading away in front of him.

"The writing is Enochian," Cas explains, a dab of colour warming his cheeks as he takes the book from Dean's hands, making Dean glad he asked. "I'm beginning to think your Men of Letters must have had angelic allies at some point in their history. Perhaps even from the start. This whole place is littered with Heavenly knowledge. It's... strange... to think there is so much about my people, my family, I don't know."

"Tell me about it," Dean nods back, thinking of Adam, and Henry, and the Campbells. "So." He taps one of the open pages. "What's it say?"

"This page talks about banishing sigils." Cas folds the pages back so the writing is more visible, pointing to the relevant passage. "Remember I told you I thought they might be modified for a different purpose? You see, back in the days when we first met, when my vessel, Jimmy, was still alive, I was called back to Heaven, leaving him behind." Invigorated by the discussion Cas manages to lean forward some. Dean's not sure where this is going but nods attentively anyway. He remembers when that happened, sure. Poor Jimmy Novak, who'd sacrificed his life for his daughter. Another soul they'd failed to save. "At the time I assumed such power was beyond me. That it was an archangel's ability. Ultimately it was Raphael they sent for me, after all. But this—" He taps the pages. "—would suggest otherwise. Typically a banishment sigil banishes the vessel along with the angel, not necessarily to the same place, but the purpose is to send both as far from the sigil maker as possible. But these instructions put forward a way of banishing the angel _alone_ , leaving their vessel intact in the location of banishment, much like when I was taken from Jimmy."

Dean keeps nodding for another beat, encouraging Cas on, before he realises that his friend's wide eyed gaze is one of expectance. Cas has finished his piece and is waiting on Dean's reaction.

"Ooookay," Dean offers, lines stacking up over his brow as he tries to put the pieces together. "I don't—That's great and all, Cas, but how does it help us with your grace? With keeping you alive?"

Response to this is a blank look followed by a head tilt. Wow, Dean didn't think it was that dumb a question. Cas doesn't _have_ a vessel any more, so how can—

"Sam!" Dean exclaims as the penny drops. "This is for Sam. This is how we get Zeke—Ezekiel—whoever, away from him."

"Yes."

"That's fantastic!" Dean shakes his head, grinning, almost gasping with relief. He should have known he could count on Cas to figure shit like this out. "So, what, you found a cure for you already?"

There's something weird about the smile Cas gives him in answer, the way it flickers once and then dies, the way Cas' eyes narrow for a second, darkening, then growing soft. Moving from confusion back to that painful, uncalled for apology.

"You..." Dean starts, suspicion coiling inside him. "You have been _looking_ for a way to fix this grace thing, right? I mean... you haven't been in here spending all your time on Sam?"

The way Cas' eyes flick down is answer enough.

And the shock of it is so strong it zaps Dean's anger before it's had time to grow.

"Damn it, Cas..." There's no venom to the words, they're too quiet. A sound of pain more than recrimination. "Why...?"

"I don't think there's anything to find, Dean," Cas answers without looking up, eyes tracing the pages of the book instead. "I don't think there's a solution to my problem."

"That's the whole point of _looking for one_." 

"I just—" Cas sighs, running his fingers down the central line between the two pages. "I don't see the benefit in wasting valuable time on something that in all likelihood has no answer. I _knew_ I could find a way to aid Sam. It seemed prudent to focus on that before... before it was too late."

"Too late..."

The bed sheets crumple under Dean's fingers as his hands ball into fists at his sides. Slow rage starting to burn at the unfairness of it all. He jumps at the feel of Cas' warm - too warm - hand sliding over one of his own.

"Dean, listen." Cas discards the book, full focus back on Dean, that slight unearthly glow once again circling his eyes. "I know... I know you blame yourself for my condition. You think I should be angry with you for sending me away. But I'm not." Cas' fingers tighten round Dean's knuckles. "I was, perhaps. At first. Though mostly hurt. It seemed like... like I wasn't good enough."

"That was _never -“_

"I know, I know. I see now it wasn't about me. You were only following this angel's instructions. Though I wish you'd trusted me enough to tell me the truth."

This isn't right, Dean thinks. If this were Sam they'd be screaming by now, trading blows. 'Ezekiel' had been spot on there. This quiet disappointment, gentle understanding - Dean doesn't know how to take it. Which only makes him dig his fingers deeper into the sheets.

"I wanted to," he grits out. "God knows I did. I just - I didn't -"

"You were afraid," Cas nods. "For Sam. For yourself. And at first it felt right, keeping it to yourself. It kept the rest of us unburdened with the weight of the situation. Then by the time you realised it wasn't something you could carry alone, revealing the truth was... too hard. Too shameful..."

Each sentence burns Dean a little deeper, the painful, shameful, accuracy of every word reaching the very heart of him. His eyes sting as they try and stay focused on Cas, like he's trapped in a circle of smoke. 

"I _understand_ ," Cas tells him through the fire. "Better than anyone, that deception can sometimes seem the best form of protection. And I know what it is to lose yourself in a lie."

Dean draws in a shaky breath, nodding as he turns away. What a stupid, tragic fucking thing for him to gain an affinity with Cas over. God, that it's taken this, this and the death of an innocent kid, for him to finally see that, underneath the grace and the wings and the angelic naivety, Cas is really not so different to him at all. Dean's spent so long lamenting how far Cas has always seemed from him, someone too good or too bad, not human enough or, lately, almost too human, too much of a civilian, for him to be close to. Never quite part of a world Dean felt they could walk together. And now here they are, worlds finally, fully, colliding. Just in time for them to be ripped apart again.

"So I—" Cas pauses, voice growing thick. "Well, I want you to know that... that we're _good_. And if—if it's forgiveness you want from me, then you have it. I—I am grateful to have known you, Dean."

Something about Cas' tone shakes loose a memory. Cas' palm as warm on his shoulder as it is now over Dean's hand, Dean listening with one ear, his other on the surrounding forest, thoughts still partly with Benny scouting ahead. _Thank you. For everything_.

"You don't... You mean more to me than you know."

"Shut up," Dean says, and the way his voice breaks with the words, the weakness the tremor exposes, only makes his anger boil over. "Shut up!"

Snatching his hand away, Dean jumps to his feet and whirls round.

"Don't you dare, don't you fucking _dare_ make this a goodbye!" he shouts down at Cas, who doesn't even flinch. Just sits there and takes it, lips flattening in sympathy. Bastard. "So—so this is it? You're just giving up? Like you did in Purgatory?"

Cas shakes his head.

"This is nothing like Purgatory," he says softly.

"No? And how is that? Because from where I'm standing it looks _exactly_ like it!" Part of Dean hates himself for erupting like he is, knows Cas doesn't deserve it. But oh god this is getting too much, cutting too deep. A breakdown of some kind was inevitable and this kind is always so much easier than the alternative. "It looks like you're clocking out on me, _again!_ So go ahead tell me, tell me how this is different!" 

"It's different," Cas answers, looking Dean right in the eye, unwavering. "Because in Purgatory I _wanted to die_."

The words hit Dean like a punch in the gut. He's still shaking with anger, but can only breathe heavily into the following silence. 

And the worst part is he'd known. He _knew_ how bad it was for Cas back then, Cas had fucking _told him_ his fear that death was becoming something desirable, and now here was Dean basically throwing Cas' trauma at him in accusation. What was he thinking? He should be sympathising with Cas' feelings, not criticising them.

"You see," Cas starts after a moment, voice shaking. "For the first time, in a long time, I was starting to feel... alive. As if my life had meaning again. As if there might still be a place for me in this world..." His lips quirk up in one corner. "It's funny... because I was lost when you asked me to leave here. And yet I think it helped me, to be alone for a while. It gave me time, to think about who I was, who I wanted to be. These past few months have been some of the most difficult for me, but I have come out of them grateful, more than anything, to be alive. I—I don't want this, I'm not giving up... I'm simply trying to face facts."

Dean has to bite his lip to keep himself from losing it in exactly the way he's fighting not to, the open, earnest look on Cas' face, the joy and the _hope_ in his voice as he speaks about feeling alive, putting a lump in Dean's throat so big it's all he can do not to choke on it. Cas should _have_ that life, damn it! He should find his place in the world! And fuck, if Dean had just been a little more honest, if he'd manned up and challenged Zeke a little more, then maybe that place could have been right here. Not dying from poisoned grace, but human and happy. With Kevin. Maybe even with Sam. All of them, as a family.

"Screw the facts!" Dean barks. Painful emotions can always be disciplined if you shout loud enough—he'd learnt that early on. "And screw the rules! Since—since when do rules apply to us, huh? Isn't that what we do? Break the rules? Whatever it takes to keep each other safe."

The pity in Cas' eyes is glaring.

"Yes," he agrees. "And isn't that why we're here? Isn't that why Sam is possessed? Why Kevin is dead? Because we broke the rules?" There's no accusation in the tone. Commiseration, perhaps. "It has to end some time, Dean. There has to come a time when we say 'enough'."

It takes a moment for Dean to get himself under control enough to answer.

"Not yet... Not yet," he says. "You might be able to accept this but I—I can't."

A smile flickers across Cas' face, though it doesn't reach his eyes.

"Alright... alright... but, please, I need you to know—"

"I don't want to hear it! I don't want to hear anything you wouldn't say if you weren't fucking dying—"

"But—"

"Just—I—I'm going back to the library."

Spinning on his heel, Dean heads towards the bedroom door, eyes focused on nothing but the doorway and the corridor beyond until the rest of the room starts to fade into fuzzy black. If he could have blotted out all sound but his footsteps and rapidly pounding heart as well then he would have, but instead Cas' words reach him clear as a bell.

"But Dean I love you—!" 

Dean falters in the doorway, only vaguely aware of gripping the frame for support. 

"I—yes—so..." Cas stammers into the silence, the sudden declaration perhaps not quite what he'd intended. "So there is that..." 

A pause.

Then Dean walks away down the corridor without looking back.

\---

" _Here_ you are. Where've you been? I've been looking all over."

Cas glances up from examining the Men of Letters switchboard, leather squeaking as he sits back in the chair beside the microphone.

There's an awkward moment as Dean's worry over finding his bedroom, the kitchen and the stock room empty starts to ebb and the relief of finding Cas again turns to tense awareness that he's _found Cas again._ And that this is the first time they've spoken since... well since the last time.

"I never had opportunity to see much of this place," Cas answers. He sounds cool enough, but the way his fingers tap against the wooden table, eventually reaching out to toy with one of the silver pawns on the chess board next to the radio betrays his anxiety. "I thought I would explore..." His fingers freeze across the intricately carved metal, this piece fashioned as some kind of soldier in a dome shaped helmet, or possibly a turban, and his eyes jump up. "That is alright, isn't it?" he asks. "I didn't mean to... to overstep any boundaries."

"Sure, yeah it... it's fine," Dean assures him. Adding, for something else to say, "I, uh, I wouldn't have thought you were up to it."

"I moved slowly," Cas nods. "And it would seem my tremors have abated." He holds out a hand, palm down. Steady as a rock. There's little satisfaction as he draws it back to himself, however, returning his attention to the pawn, twisting it round in his fingers so light flashes from its silver uniform. "I suspect it is not a positive development."

The sick or injured often show improvement before dying. Dean wishes this was something he didn't know, but he does. Just like he knows the healthy looking flush on Cas' cheeks is not a sign of recovery but of fever getting stronger. That's why Cas has stripped out of the hoodie down to the thin white Tee underneath. 

Although it was Dean's, it still looks baggy over Cas' smaller frame. And yet there is something endearing in that, in seeing Cas clothed in something so integral to the kid Dean used to be, to the man he's become. The Blue Oyster logo in the centre, faded away at the edges but still just about recognisable, had once been a badge of honour for Dean, carefully chosen out of all the designs in the store, a little piece of his identity on display. It feels nice, seeing that piece of him as part of Cas' life now.

Until he remembers it could well be part of Cas' death too, soon enough. 

"You, um..." Dean searches for a topic of conversation. "You play?" He nods to the pawn still gleaming in Cas' hand.

"I am familiar with the rules," Cas answers. "Matthew—" He looks up to explain. "—a temporary employee, at the Gas and Sip. He used to bring a board to the store and invite us to play during our lunch hour. He was training, I believe. For a tournament."

It's strange, hearing Cas talk about his civilian life. About colleagues. These other people he knew who were maybe friends to him. Who he could _still know_ , could still be friends with,if he wanted to. Dean feels an ugly pang of _something_ in his chest. Jealousy? Maybe... But then he thinks about how this Matthew, and Nora, and who knows how many others, were there for Cas when he wasn't. How they'd made Cas feel safe and happy, enough for that minimum wage job with it's seemingly menial tasks to be something Cas had voluntarily returned to, something he'd stuck with, made his alternative to Heaven and hunting and everything in-between. 

Whatever Dean was or wasn't feeling melts away into gladness for this guy Matt and his chess board.

"He asked me to play several times," Cas continues. "But..." Cas holds the pawn up in one hand, running a thumb under the velvet across the base. "I never cared to."

He puts the soldier down a few inches from the board, adding to the collection of silver already set aside there. The board is mid-game, Dean realises, the opposing gold army a fearsome array of men in feathered helmets holding spears, a couple of bare headed guys in long robes Dean supposes are holy and so bishops, regal looking dragons standing as knights, a haughty looking guy wielding a scimitar and a tall woman in a fancy headdress. Meanwhile the silver side is a pitiful collection of two soldiers, a tall guy who looks kind of like a sultan that must be the silver king and an elephant with a kind of tent on its back that it takes Dean a moment to place as a rook. 

Sam and Kevin must have been in the middle of one of their games. 

Dean can guess who was winning. 

"Kevin plays... played..." he says, dropping into the chair angled for the other side of the board. "He's the one who brought this down here, took it from the balcony. Kid was a whizz..." Dean's lips pull up at the corners as he recalls the couple of times Kevin had coerced him into playing, and the many times he'd watched Sam take the kid on. How Kevin had crowed with every victory. "No matter what, he always managed to get at least half his guys across the board, and then he'd transform them into queens and knights and whatever. I don't think I ever saw him lose."

Until the last time he'd seen him, Dean supposes. An unknowing pawn in a game of Dean's design. Sacrificed accordingly. 

Nostalgia fades quickly and Dean reaches for the golden queen to distract himself, running a thumb down the metal folds of her robe, opening the way for a lull in conversation.

The quiet makes the elephant they've been trying to avoid loom even larger, to the point where even Dean sees that he's just going to have to bite the bullet and talk about it.

"Cas—"

"Dean—"

They speak together and both cut off because of it, stopping to blink at each other.

"Look what—what you said—" Dean manages, only to be interrupted by Cas shaking his head.

"I shouldn't have. I'm sorry. The last thing I wanted to do was make things awkward between us."

"What?" Dean forces a laugh. "I'm not—we're not—" He waves his hand between them, a gesture that loses effect since his fingers remain curled around the queen, unable to point. "This isn't—this isn't awkward."

He flashes a grin that, aside from pulling painfully at the bruised skin around his eye, feels all wrong on his face—too sudden, too much teeth. He's trying too hard. And from the way Cas lifts an eyebrow in response it looks like he knows it. The pause that follows as Dean's smile drops away, Cas sucking in his lips, is _decidedly_ awkward in spite of Dean's protest.

"Okay. Okay, yeah," Dean concedes, putting the queen back in position as he looks for a way to salvage the situation. "But, look, I get it, alright? Things are... _bad_ right now. Emotions running high. It... it's easy to say things you don't mean."

Cas opens his mouth, then stops, and for a second Dean thinks he's going to accept the out, just agree and let them move on. But then he licks his lips and continues.

"But I did mean it, Dean," he says, catching Dean's eye to reinforce his words. "I meant every word."

Dean swallows. Yeah. He was afraid of that.

"Right, but... but you meant like—like a brother, right? I mean that's what—that's what you were talking about when you... right?"

God, could he sound any more pathetic?

Cas rests his hands between his knees and regards him for a moment, tired eyes scanning Dean's face, slow and unselfconscious. Freaking angel. It's all Dean can do not to squirm under the scrutiny.

"That would be easier, wouldn't it?" Cas says eventually. "I've been telling myself it was that for a long time. But... Losing my grace, it... I feel things more keenly without it, and I don't just mean physical sensations." He tilts his head. "Though the difference in experiencing physical pain, and, indeed, physical pleasure, in human form as opposed to celestial is _considerable._ " This gaze grows distant for a moment, then he blinks to snap himself out of the reverie. "But, my point is... it's become very clear to me that the way I feel about you... it's... it's _different_. I haven't felt this way about anyone, Dean, I—"

Panic has Dean paralysed at this stage. His mind flashes to Cas' nearly absurd deer-in-the-headlights expression the night Dean took him to that brothel and Dean imagines he must look pretty similar right now. Perhaps that's why Cas stops and presses his lips together, grimacing in more apology.

Fuck. Dean was wrong to come looking, he can't do this. He can't sit here and talk about Cas'— _Cas'—_ secret feelings for him. For _him_. It's—it's too much. He can't. No. But he has to. He _has_ to. He can't leave now.

"I'm sorry," Cas says, again, dropping his gaze. "Please don't worry. I don't—I don't expect anything from you. In return. I would never presume that. I would never even have said anything, but... well, I..."

"You figured it might be your last chance," Dean fills in, voice a whisper. "So you thought, why not?"

Deathbed confession. Yeah. It's always easier to fess up to the big stuff when you know you won't be around for the consequences. Just ask his dad. 

Drop the bomb at the right time and you can rest safe in the knowledge you won't ever have to actually confront the truth. Won't have to live with it. Won't have to risk putting it out there, seeing the world around you change because of it, maybe for the worse. Probably for the worse.

He can picture it, easy. Wanting, just once, to feel the taste of the words, to hear how they sound out loud. Just for a moment. After so many years swallowing them down. Just once. Just to try it. Before it was too late.

A tickling sensation spreads out from Dean's fingertips and moves down his palms, making him glance away from Cas' bowed head to his hand still resting by the chess board. If he squints Dean can make out a golden tinge to his fingernails. Easy to overlook, but then, he's been expecting this.

Flexing his fingers, Dean turns back in time to catch his friend daring to look up again.

His thoughts flash back to Cas in that brothel. Wide-eyed with intimidation, but oh, just a little bit of longing too. Just needing a little push, a little reassurance, that it was okay to want, and it was okay to try. 

"Why not?" Dean repeats, muttering the words beneath his breath. A push.

He doesn't let himself think, just moves, pushing out of his chair and leaning towards Cas, hands reaching out to grip the leather padded arms either side of his friend. 

"Dean?" Cas questions as Dean leans closer, eyes flicking to Dean's hands. His brow furrows, but he looks puzzled, not afraid, at the way Dean has him pinned. "What—?"

Cas leans back at first, when Dean bends down far enough for his breath to fall on Cas' open lips. Their eyes lock. God knows what Cas sees there, Dean's still on autopilot. Too overwhelmed by their closeness, by the heat and rich, heady smell of Cas, to be encouraging, to even smile. But whatever Cas sees soon leads him to, or at least doesn't stop him from, glancing at Dean's lips. Dean can feel the brush of Cas' lashes as he glances back up, eyes meeting Dean's again in question. 

Closing his own eyes, Dean touches his mouth to Cas' parted lips in answer. So chaste it's barely a kiss at first. Testing. Tasting. When Cas doesn't object Dean grows bolder, catching Cas' lips once, twice more, with his own. Which is when Cas starts to respond, opening his mouth wider to invite Dean in, stroking the underside of Dean's upper lip with his tongue, sighing as Dean sucks his bottom lip in response.

Then Dean feels fingers sliding over the back of his hands, circling his wrists to hold him in place while Cas uses the leverage to pull himself closer, taking control. He hums down Dean's throat as he deepens the kiss, _licking_ over Dean's tongue, then pulling back a little to pepper smaller, nipping kisses into the corners of Dean's mouth before claiming it with his own once more.

They're panting when Dean breaks away, resting his forehead on Cas' as he waits for his breathing to calm, eyes flickering open.

Dean can feel himself flushing. He only wishes he knew for certain if it was from the kiss, or the other thing.

That was so much better than expected.

So much that it hurts to think about.

"I'm sorry," he gasps, lifting his head. His nose brushes Cas' along the way.

"Don't be," Cas breathes, lips swollen pink and softened at the corners in a smile. Though his eyes swirl impossible blue with flecks of gold, strengthening Dean's resolve over what he's about to do. "That was... pleasant. You didn't have to do that. Thank you."

He thinks it's goodbye, Dean realises. A gesture. Giving Cas what he wants to make his passing easier.

Well, the goodbye part might be true at least. 

"But I'm sorry it was like this, with you dying, and me—"

Keeping secrets again. Doing shit behind your back. 

"You mean there are other times this might have happened?"

It's meant as a joke, a low chuckle rumbling in Cas' throat even as he says it, eyebrows raised in mocking as he draws his hands away, leaning back. But Dean doesn't think it's funny.

"Maybe," he answers, watching Cas' eyes as the truth buried in that small gasp of a word sinks in, the joking rhetorical of his question melting away. He watches Cas sit upright, lose his smile, eyes widening. In surprise. In hope. And finally, in anguish.

Deathbed confessions. Always easier. Except when they're not.

"I'm sorry," Dean says again, chest aching with 'what if's and 'never will's. "I'm sorry we never did this sooner."

His eyes feel hot. With tears perhaps. Or something else. Or both.

Cas breathes out—one quick and heavy sigh over what they've lost, all the times they never had, and never will. Then he's reaching up to cup Dean's face in his hands.

"This will have to be enough," he says before kissing Dean again, wild this time, desperate, greedy. Like he thinks he can fit a lifetime inside this one embrace.

Then one kiss turns to five. To eight. To kissing Dean's eyes, his cheek, along his jaw. Whispering in his ear.

"Don't forget me."

Dean knows he's crying now, he can feel a tear tracking down his face. But it's not the tears making his head start to throb, or his hands on Cas' shoulder shine gold. 

"No," he rasps back. "If this goes south, you're the one who'll have to remember me. And I'm sorry for that too."

Previously gentle hands drop down Dean's neck, pinching round his collarbone as Cas jerks back. His gasp as his eyes find Dean's is one of horror, making Dean suspect the golden glow has crept to his irises by now.

"What have you done?!"

"Grace is like blood, right?" Dean starts, struggling to hear himself over the sudden roar of his own blood in his ears. "Well, Crowley says humans? We're like, universal donors. Doesn't matter what kind of angel you are, any of you can get powered up by a human soul. And enough soul juice might just be able to clean up your grace so it's one you can handle." 

"Dean!" Cas' lips form shapes without sound, like he has so many objections he doesn't know where to start. " _Crowley_ told you?" he finally lands on. "Even if he's not lying, siphoning power from a living soul is incredibly dangerous, you have no idea how difficult it was the last time I tried, how close I came to killing Bobby as I made the attempt. And though I was weak then I was still far stronger than I am now. I don't think I have the power to even try to touch your soul."

"I know," Dean nods. "I figured. That's..." Dean takes a breath. Goddamn he's _hot_ all of a sudden. He rubs a hand across his forehead and his palm comes away slick with sweat. "That's why I did the spell."

"What spell?"

"The Men of Letters, they knew how to harness the power of their souls." Dean talks quickly, aware there isn't much time left to explain. "Henry did a spell—I knew there had to be information on it somewhere. And there was. I found this one thing. How to 'manifest the power of a soul' it said, or something. But, uh... it wasn't too clear on what happened to the, um, the "manifestee." But... if it got you what you needed... I had to, man. I _had_ to. Ah!"

Though he knows it's useless, Dean can't help clutching his chest as pain surges out from it. The skin of his hand is mottled gold, the colour pulsing. Until Cas covers it with the ordinary flesh of his own.

"Alright," Cas says, voice tight. Suppressed anger. Or just fear. Dean's too preoccupied to figure it out. "Alright. If the power this spell releases isn't too overwhelming, I should be able to absorb it as it expels itself. That way I can use the energy to keep you stable and that... hopefully, that will make the effects on you minimal."

"Okay," Dean hisses. "But Cas, if something goes wrong, you... you take care of Sam, okay?"

Cas' lips are a thin line when Dean manages to fight the pain enough to glance up, but seeing Dean's eyes on him Cas gives a curt nod.

"Of course."

"And Cas..."

Dean imagines the taste of the words, how they might sound, just this once, out loud.

"I—"

A searing heat rips through him while somewhere in the distance Cas' voice yells his name, screams sound in his own voice. 

Then white.

Then nothing. 

\---

The first thing Dean notices on waking is how comfortable he is. It's been weeks since he woke up without at least one part of him twisted with cramp due to whichever awkward surface he'd managed, either by design or, as was most often the case, by accident, to catch his Zs on.

Grown so accustom to waking with a series of moans and groans, a growl of discomfort is already rumbling up his throat as consciousness filters in. The feel of warm sheets and the snug fitting indent of his body in the mattress beneath him turns the sound into a hum of pleasure and Dean rolls over, reluctant to surrender the warm safety of sleep just yet.

The second thing Dean notices on waking, as he buries his face in the deep, soft, decadent fabric of his pillow, is that he is, in fact, _waking_.

It's the incredulity over this fact that pushes Dean all the way out of his slumber and into a sitting position, eyes snapping open.

The sense he gets from his surroundings is one Dean is still finding hard to deal with, still finding himself almost overwhelmed by. The feeling of _home_. His room. His place. Not a pit-stop, not a means of travel, but a fixed point that he can retreat to and call his own.

There's a spike of fear at finding the room empty, because Dean had figured when he discovered the Men of Letters spell and put together his plan that either he wouldn't be waking again at all after, or he and Cas would be surviving the hail Mary together. It hadn't occurred to him that he might pull through but Cas wouldn't. That hadn't been an option. But his fear over the possibility quickly fades as he considers where he is, where he's been _moved to_. Moved by someone, presumably, very much alive, and someone kind and caring enough to have bothered to remove his shoes and tuck him under the sheets. Which rules out the only other, demonic, occupant of the bunker pretty conclusively. 

Anxious, but optimistic, Dean jumps out of bed, laces on his boots and ventures outside.

He finds Cas standing over the table in the library, back in Sam's hoodie with not a hair our of place, skin back to its usual colour, movements easy and generally looking the pinnacle of health. Living proof that Dean's plan has worked.

It's such a welcome sight that Dean stops for a moment to take it in, just watching as Cas studies a copper bowl positioned at the end of the table, beside a collection of herbs, an unlit candle and a miniature bottle containing a feather. Cas also has a hand on a slim book, the same he'd been discussing with Dean before, holding the pages open so he can refer to it as he collects different amounts of each herb and drops them in the bowl. 

Working on the spell to free Sam from 'Ezekiel's' control, Dean thinks, of course.

Cas dips his fingers in a jar filled with dark orange powder—saffron maybe—as Dean walks in, pauses to check the book, drops a pinch of the stuff into the copper bowl, checks the book again, and reaches for the orange stuff once more, muttering under his breath. This time when he flicks the stuff into the bowl he happens to glance up and sees Dean hovering in the archway towards the War Room.

"You're awake then."

Dean had hardly been expecting a joyous reunion, but Cas' stony expression seems a bit overkill from a guy who would have been dead by now if not for him.

"And you're alive," he answers back, unable to keep the proud, slightly smug, sense of accomplishment about the fact from his tone.

From the way Cas glares it seems he doesn't share Dean's triumph.

"How are you feeling?" Cas asks, brushing his hands together to dislodge the remains of the orange dust from his fingers as he moves round the table.

"I—" Dean stretches his arms out. Shrugging. Grinning. "I feel great, actually. Better than ever." The way his grin stretches his face feels weird and it takes Dean a moment to realise why—no pain. He touches the previously tender skin round his eye and finds it smooth and fresh. "Ha. Check it out. I feel like I just got an extreme makeover."

Cas doesn't smile back, just nods.

"Good," he says, before grabbing Dean by his shoulders and slamming him into the archway so hard Dean can only grunt in response, feeling the vibration of the hit travel down his back to his knees.

"Don't ever do that again!" Cas growls, so close Dean can feel the damp heat of Cas' breath on his face. Anger burns in Cas' narrow, but so very ordinary blue, eyes and seems to crackle in the air around them.

Finally, a fight. 

Only now it's here, Dean finds he can't bring himself to push back.

"...alright," he mutters once he's caught his breath.

But that's not good enough for Cas.

"I mean it, Dean," he presses, hands sliding round to grip the lapels of Dean's jacket and pull. "You... you do these things, make these choices. For me, for Sam... You think it's your responsibility, but it's _not_. Dean, these aren't your choices to make!"

"Hey!" Dean starts, an argument clawing its way out of him on instinct, even if his heart isn't in it. "If I hadn't made them, you'd be _dead._ So would Sam."

"And now Kevin is," Cas bites back. "And Sam is possessed." It's all Dean can do not to crumble under that. Does Cas not realise that he _knows_ all of that is his fault? That he's been living with a black hole in his heart _every day_ since Kevin died? "And what if this hadn't worked?" Cas goes on, barely letting Dean breathe. "What then? We'd _both_ be dead now. With no one left to help Sam."

This possibility, of Sam abandoned to his fate, riles Dean up at first and he curls his lips, opening his mouth to snarl back. Because he would _never_ —

Except... 

Except he had. He _had_ risked that. 

Dean sags back, all thoughts of defiance escaping in a gasp, face turning slack, eyes darting away. He hadn't thought. He just hadn't thought of that possibility. Hadn't thought beyond the need to _save Cas now_ , and that if it meant a sacrifice on his part, well, that was how it should be, wasn't it? 

Cas' hands loosen around Dean's jacket and he draws back with a sigh, smoothing the fabric as though in apology.

"I know you only want to protect us," Cas says, quieter now. "To protect your family. But Dean, this isn't the way."

Despair crashes in like a wave, swallowing Dean whole so he has to press his eyes together to fight the sudden tide threatening to spill from them. Because protecting people, protecting his _family_ —that's _all he is_. The only thing he's ever found meaning in. And this part of him Cas is criticising, the hard choices he makes to keep his family safe, taking the burden of it, of their safety, onto himself so they don't have to, giving all of himself, always, without question or thought, it's the only way he knows to do it. If that's wrong, if that's _not_ helping, and god Dean can't deny his family has seen more hurt than help these last few months, then what's even the point? What good is he?

He sniffs, pushing the pain and the fear of it all back. Like always.

"You're one to talk about making people's choices," he murmurs, vision swimming as he opens his eyes. He blinks, trying to shake the emotion away, trying to turn this round, take the heat off him. "What about your deal with Crowley, huh? The one that ended up freeing the freaking _leviathan_."

But Cas doesn't take the bait, doesn't fight back and give them the easy out of a sparring match they can bury their emotions in.

"I _know_..." he answers, softly, instead. "I know... And that's why I understand. I thought by acting in secret, by not telling you about Crowley and Raphael, that I could protect everyone, save _everyone_. Even sparing them, sparing _you_ , the means of that protection..." Cas' voice is shaking now and when Dean blinks up he thinks he sees water shining in Cas' eyes. Though it's hard to tell through the veil across his own. "I took it all on myself, because I thought that way, all the harm would fall to me. But all it did was cause the people around me more pain. I think... I think sometimes you can protect people too much."

An image flashes in Dean's mind. A child's drawing. A black figure with long, circling arms, coiling protectively around a child. Protective, but menacing too. Overwhelming. Terrorising poor little Timmy even as she kept him safe.

"Sometimes you need to—"

"Let go," Dean finishes.

At first Cas thinks it's an instruction and he lifts his hands away, stepping back, palms raised in apology. Then he catches Dean's eye, sees his tears slowly breaking free, and he nods.

"Yes."

Dean sniffs again, wipes his nose on his sleeve, and nods back.

"I... I know... I know that..."

It's harder than usual, keeping the emotions in check. Or maybe this time Dean just doesn't want to quite as badly as he normally does, encouraged by how free with his own Cas is being. In any case, there's a strange relief in feeling his pain and guilt leaking out of him, escaping in hot lines down his cheeks, exposed to the open air where it can evaporate, instead of eating away inside him like acid.

"But Cas, I... I don't know how."

The way Cas flattens his lips and nods back is more than sympathy.

"I know," he answers, and Dean is struck by the fact that yes, Cas really does. He knows. He knows Dean's weaknesses, his flaws, sees Dean for the broken, messed up guy he is, and none of that is enough to stop Cas _loving_ him. "And, though I wish I was, I... I am not the one to tell you how, because I don't know either—"

Cas breaks off to rub at his cheeks with both hands, pausing to blink at them afterwards, eyes narrowing as he rubs fingers and thumbs together, as if he's surprised to find them damp. His mouth quirks up in one corner, like part of him is happy for the tears, to find himself capable of them perhaps. And the gesture makes Dean less anxious about using his sleeve to dab at his own face, less ashamed of the way new heat continues to well up in his eyes, forcing him to wipe at them with his finger and thumb. 

He can't imagine exposing himself like this with Sam, though perhaps he'll have to one day, because for Sam, amongst other things, and for anyone else really, Dean needs to be strong. Anything that risks him seeming otherwise can't be permitted. But here and now, with Cas quietly breaking down as much as Dean himself, it's like there's space for Dean to be weak, just for a little while. Because Cas isn't looking for support, doesn't _need_ Dean to be something or someone or anyone. They're just... here. Themselves. Together.

"We are not so different, Dean," Cas says, giving voice to Dean's thoughts, albeit unknowingly. Or perhaps not, if his grace is accessible again as well as stabilised. "You're right. I rush into things. My need to help the other angels, to be the one to shoulder that responsibility, it can blind me, and not simply to my own detriment." 

He sighs and turns away, moving towards the table so he can rest his hands on it, bowing his head between his arms. Like Dean had found him at the scene of one of that killer angel's victims. Still so human, even now with his grace back. Struggling. Afraid.

"I was not alone when I was first captured by Malachi," he explains, staring ahead. Confessing. "There was another angel, Muriel. She was only with me because I tricked her into answering a prayer. That was the start of my plan to help, to gain information. Malachi killed her when I refused to give him information about Metatron. She was innocent, and if it wasn't for me, she might have had a chance..."

There are no words Dean can think of to answer that, so he just walks over and rests a hand on Cas' shoulder, letting him know he's there and he's listening.

"So," Dean says as the quiet between them starts to grow. "Where do we go from here?"

"We help Sam," Cas answers. "And then..." He shrugs, and though his eyes are still dull, still a little wet with sorrow and regret, they hold fast to Dean's, next words warm and full of promise. "We'll figure it out."

There's that pronoun again. Dropping from Cas' lips like it's never in question, like no matter what shit they might go through, at the end of the day they're in it together.

"Cas, I..." Dean starts, squeezing Cas' shoulder as he tries to put his feelings into some kind of order. "I'm sorry about the spell. You're right, I shouldn't have made that call without talking to you first. But... but I'm really glad you're here. And that you're, you know, not dying."

Cas' smile is like sunshine in a storm.

"You're forgiven," he says, standing up straight. Though he does nothing to dislodge Dean's hand from his shoulder. "And, well... as foolish, ill-conceived gestures go..." A breathy chuckle bursts out of him, catching him as much as Dean off guard from the way Cas shakes his head through it. "I suppose it was rather romantic," he finishes, glancing up at Dean through his lashes. "In a melodramatic, ultimately unpleasant sort of way."

Dean's brain freezes on 'romantic' and the rest of him tenses to match. Because, shit. Does Cas think...? And that they...? 

That was the problem with surviving deathbed confessions, or even almost or implied confessions. Consequences.

"Uuuh, yeah, um," Dean mutters, jerking his hand away, then feeling bad about how callous the move looked and moving it back, only that just looks stupid so he pulls away again and tries to hide the crazy spasm by rubbing his neck. "Look don't think—I mean, we're not—" he protests, stepping back. "Just, don't go there, okay?"

"Go... where?" Cas asks, flashing Dean a cute, almost coy, smile.

"I mean, it's not gonna happen," Dean clarifies, except this only makes Cas frown and tilt his head.

"But... if you're referring to our kiss, then it already has happened." 

Yeah, he kind of walked into that one.

"And it's not gonna happen again," Dean says. Can't get any clearer than that.

He's prepared for Cas to be hurt, maybe even angry, but he just lifts an eyebrow in question.

"Why?" Then Cas' eyes widen. "Was it... not good? Because I found it very agreeable, but then, I haven't had much experience, or practice. I'm sorry if I—"

"Dude, no, you were fine," Dean interrupts, hating to see Cas grow anxious over nothing. "You were..." He flashes back to the touch and taste and slide of Cas' lips, the memory of his tongue and the caress of his fingers. Dean coughs and pulls his jacket back from his neck, suddenly a little too warm. "You were great. We just... You and me, like that, it'd never work."

Again, there's no hurt, just a tilt of the head.

"Why?"

"Well because..."

Dean trails off. Damn, the guy makes a compelling argument.

"Well... because since when do you even have a thing for guys, for one?" he tries, aware as he's saying it that it lacks all sense, but damn it there's got to be _something_.

"I have never _not_ had a 'thing' for males." Touché. "But regardless," Cas continues. "We are not talking about some casual physical liaison, we're talking about my relationship with _you_ , and Dean your gender is irrelevant, I lo—"

"Yeah okay!" Dean cuts in, holding up a hand. "You... you said it already let's not... let's not overdo it."

Because to say it out loud now, with them both alive and a future stretching out in front of them—it's no longer something Dean wants to hear or taste, it's something that feels very much like a jinx. Like the warm, too good to be true reality of it will evaporate if it's exposed to the open air. Will fade into nothing, like it never was. And god, Dean doesn't want _that_. He wants to keep it safe and locked away, wants to keep his and Cas' feelings for each other forever trapped in that golden moment, where it might have been nothing but deathbed fantasy, or it _might_ have been something deeper, something that _could_ have been more. Like that zombie cat, right? That was living and dead inside the box at the same time? Offering a possibility that Dean could cling to for comfort, one that would always be there, always be true. Just so long as he never opened the box.

From the way creases are forming over Cas' brow it seems he doesn't follow Dean's thinking on this. But he doesn't try and reiterate the sentiment at least.

"I assumed," he says. "From the way you kissed me, that you... felt a similar way. Was I mistaken?"

"Yeah," Dean nods, since it seems the path of least resistance. Only then there _is_ hurt flooding into Cas' eyes and Dean is so tired of being the one to put that look on Cas' face, feels twisted inside knowing he's doing it by _lying_ , again. "No," he counters. But that's not the truth either. "I don't know!" he yells, throwing up his hands. "Look, we just _can't_ , Cas," he goes on, pacing away. "Even without the whole guy-on-guy thing, you're an angel, I'm human." He stops at the end of the table, beside the copper bowl and littered ingredients, and points a hand at Cas. "You've got angel crap to deal with." He points to himself. "I've got Sam. You really think there's room for—for _us_ in the middle of all that?"

There's a pause as Cas mulls this over.

"So..." Cas begins, moving towards Dean. "You're saying we can't be together, because we have responsibilities?" He doesn't stop when he gets close, instead he moves right into Dean's space and the intrusion that had once felt invading, then become endearing, now makes Dean's skin feel electric, thrumming with anticipation, with suppressed want. "The same responsibilities we are trying to let go of, as much as we can?" Cas finishes.

He stops and stares at Dean, expression calm. Waiting. And Dean swallows.

Well, yeah, if you put it like that his objections do sound pretty lame.

And yet Dean continues to resist the urge to lean in, to twist a hand into the folds of that hoodie and draw Cas to him. Tenses up at the thought of Cas taking over and doing the reverse, enough to drop his head as a preventive measure. It would be better to back away, and it wouldn't be hard. But the thing of it is, he _does_ want it all, even that last, oh, especially that last. His heart is pounding with the thought of touching Cas again, touching _more_ of him this time, having Cas strip him down, giving himself to Cas' hands and lips and tongue. Only... only he _can't_. Why can't he? Why can't he let himself have this?

"It's alright, Dean," Cas tells him, brushing Dean's arm just lightly with his fingertips before moving away. Sensing Dean's tension, perhaps. "If it's not what you want, you don't need to explain."

Cas moves around him to stand in front of the bowl, patting Dean once, on the back. A gesture he'd also made as he left to by a round of drinks—not so long ago, really, and yet it feels like a lifetime. A gesture of friendship. Brother to brother.

It makes Dean sag a little in relief, makes him feel safe, knowing Cas isn't going to push. But at the same time it highlights how _different_ things are now. Because the touch feels like going back, feels like a return to what they were _before_ , and is that really the best way to go? Or just, the _safest_ way to go? Is that the real reason Dean is holding back? Because he's afraid?

"Cas, wait," he murmurs, stepping beside him at the bowl. But not too close. "I... I don't know. I don't know what I want," he admits. "And I can't think about it right now. Not with Sam out there like he is, with Kevin just buried. I can't... but maybe..." He glances up and finds strength in the warm, quiet patience of Cas' gaze. "Maybe if you ask me again, some other time... at least after this stuff with Sam, you know?"

Cas is nodding before Dean's finished.

"I can wait," he answers, eyes soft, lips curving in a smile that lingers, like a promise, even as he turns away and reaches for the open book on the table, running his finger down the pages to find the next ingredient for the spell.

All Dean can do for a moment is smile back at Cas as he works, a strange, weightless feeling blooming inside him. Because no matter what happens from this point on, he knows—he _knows_ —Cas will be there. And that's enough.

"Don't, uh, don't expect too much though, okay?" Dean says after a beat, thinking Cas deserves some warning of just what he might be waiting on. "I'm not good at the whole relationship thing, even with humans."

"I would never expect much from you, Dean," Cas replies as be breaks apart a stick of ginger, placing the smaller piece in the bowl.

"Okay, good, cos—hey!" Dean scowls at Cas for a second, until he sees the way he's biting down on a different kind of smile, eyes sparkling with something very like mischief as he reaches for a packet of leaves, pointedly refusing to look at Dean as he dumps the whole lot into the potion. "Dick," Dean mutters as his scowl twists into a grin.

"Would you pass me that knife?" Cas asks, pointing at small bone handled one on Dean's other side, sharpened so the tip flashes in the light as Dean picks it up.

"Let me guess, you need my blood?" Dean says as he hands it over.

"If you wouldn't mind," Cas answers, and as Dean holds his palm above the bowl and lets Cas swipe the blade quickly and efficiently across it, gentle but firm fingers curling Dean's hand into a fist to help the blood drip then just as efficiently wrapping the cut in a handkerchief positioned at the ready beside the bowl, Dean thinks that no, he doesn't mind. He doesn't mind at all.

~ **fin** ~


End file.
